MRS. DALLOWAY.
52 Tavistock Square, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, 1925.
Octavo. Beautifully bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe of London in twentieth century 3/4 red morocco and red cloth, back in six compartments, gilt lettered in the second and third, dated “1925” in sixth, five raised bands, top edge gilt, cream endpapers, portion of original front board and spine bound in at conclusion of text. Minor foxing to prelims, a near fine copy in a gorgeous contemporary binding.
First edition, first impression. Published 14 May 1925; c. 2000 copies printed and sold at 7s. 6d. “We find it in Woolf’s decision to turn Clarissa Dalloway, a minor character in her first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), into the main character of her story 'Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street’ (1923) — and then, after discovering that Clarissa clamored for more life, in her slow surrender to the novel. We find it stitched through her largest revision to the book: the creation of Septimus as Clarissa’s double, so as to entwine the story of an aging, wealthy, vivacious woman with the story of the First World War and its consequences. Her most famous diary entry about Mrs. Dalloway presents the two characters as metaphysical and political extremes: ‘I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity; I want to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense.’ Yet, as soon as she voiced this, she retracted it. ‘But here I may be posing,’ she wrote.” – Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 28 August 2021. I think not.
KIRKPATRICK & CLARKE A9a; WOOLMER 82.
Price: $3,500.00