Hay Festival Book Club – Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
– Free Online
100 years since the novel’s publication, join our panel of readers as they discuss Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, exploring its impact on our culture and contemporary resonance.
Submit your questions in advance of the event by emailing bookclub@hayfestival.org.
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Here, Virginia Woolf perfected the interior monologue and the novel's lyricism and accessibility have made it one of her most popular works.
100 years since the novel’s publication, we revisit the modern classic to explore its impact on our culture and contemporary resonance.
Read it? Let us know what you think on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram using #HFBookClub.
Further reading
A lifetime of lessons in Mrs Dalloway, The New Yorker
The 36 best one-star Amazon reviews of Mrs. Dalloway, Literary Hub
About the author
Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, was the major novelist at the heart of the inter-war Bloomsbury Group. Her early novels include The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob's Room. Between 1925 and 1931 she produced her finest masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and the experimental The Waves. Her later novels include The Years and Between the Acts, and she also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, journalism and biography, including the passionate feminist essay A Room of One's Own. Suffering from depression, she drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.
About Hay Festival Book Club
Timeless titles to offer you a break from the day to day. Can't decide what to read next? Follow your curiosity and join Hay Festival on a journey to imagine the world anew through great literature. Unconstrained by genre or form these are our monthly picks of great books worth reading (or re-reading) right now.
Throughout the month, we'll share interesting links and articles relating to our selection on social media using #HFBookClub and invite you all to get involved with your questions and comments. Each selection will also be marked with a free online event.
If you'd like to recommend a book for consideration, get in touch via bookclub@hayfestival.org.
Happy reading!
Supported by Unwin Charitable Trust
Buy the book for this event
Mrs Dalloway
In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life.
'Sheer magic' Eileen Atkins, Daily Mail
'One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century' Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
