Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. First published in 1925, it charts a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a prosperous member of London society, as she prepares to throw a party. Writing in her diary during the writing of the book, Woolf explained what she had set out to do: 'I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity. I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most intense.' Celebrated for its innovative narrative technique and distillation of many of the preoccupations of 1920s Britain, Mrs Dalloway is now seen as a landmark of twentieth-century fiction, and one of the finest products of literary modernism.
With:
Professor Dame Hermione Lee President of Wolfson College, Oxford
Jane Goldman Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow
Kathryn Simpson Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Transcript
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| 0:45.9 | the program. Hello in 1922 Virginia Wolf began work on a novel which many now see as her masterpiece. She called it the hours |
| 0:54.8 | and in her diary she gave some indication of her ambition for the book. I want to give life and |
| 0:59.8 | death sanity and insanity, she wrote. I want to criticize the social system and to show it at work at its most intense. |
| 1:07.0 | It was under a different title that the book eventually saw the light of day three years later. |
| 1:11.0 | It's named after its central character Mrs. |
| 1:13.7 | Delaware, a wealthy woman at the heart of 1920's London society and |
| 1:18.1 | charts a single day in her life as she prepares to host a party. It's a richly |
| 1:22.1 | inventive novel which deals |
| 1:23.2 | sensitively with mental illness and the scars of the First World War and |
| 1:27.0 | nine years after it was published Mrs. Delaware is now seen as one of the |
| 1:30.0 | most original and innovative products of literary modernism. |
| 1:33.4 | With me to discuss Virginia Wolf's novel Mrs. Delaware are Professor Dame |
| 1:37.5 | Hermione Lee, President of Wilson College Oxford, Jane Goldman, reader in |
| 1:41.7 | English literature at the University of Glasgow and |
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