Hay Festival Book Club is partnering Charleston Festival and Vintage Classics this month to celebrate 100 years since Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf was published.
Promoting monthly reading selections, Hay Festival Book Club encourages audiences to follow their curiosity and imagine the world anew through great literature.
The celebrations culminate on Wednesday 14 May – exactly 100 years since the book’s first publication day – with a free online event featuring writers Deborah Levy and Edmund de Waal with academic Shahida Bari on the book’s impact and legacy.
The event will be recorded live on the opening day of Charleston Festival at Charleston in Firle, the former home and meeting place of the Bloomsbury group.
Audiences can register for the free event now at hayfestival.org/book-club.
First published on 14 May 1925, Mrs Dalloway is one of the most famous and ground-breaking pieces of twentieth century literature. Taking one day in the mind of a woman as she prepares to give a party, the book saw Woolf perfect the interior monologue form.
A special edition of the book, using its original cover, is being published today to tie in with the 100-year celebrations by Vintage Classics, who will be supporting the Hay Festival Book Club celebrations with digital promotions and giveaways.
Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said:
“We are delighted to be partnering Charleston Festival and Vintage Classics to celebrate a momentous anniversary in English Literature and our culture more widely. Mrs Dalloway is a modern classic, offering contemporary audiences much to respond to and reflect on, something our Hay Festival Book Club will enjoy hugely."
Melissa Perkins, Head of Programme and Events at Charleston Festival, said:
“A hundred years after its publication, Mrs Dalloway continues to speak to the complexities of modern life. It feels especially meaningful to open Charleston Festival with this conversation, in the place where Woolf’s ideas were so often debated and developed. We’re delighted to partner with Hay Festival and Vintage Classics to begin 10 days of ideas, art and celebration, as Charleston Festival returns for its 36th year, 14–26 May 2025.”
Charlotte Knight, Editorial Director at Vintage Classics, said:
“We are thrilled to partner with the Hay Festival Book Club and Charleston Festival to celebrate 100 years of Virginia Woolf’s inimitable classic Mrs Dalloway.”