Night and Day

by

Virginia Woolf

photos by Shannon Tofts

George H. Doran Company, New York 1920

(first edition, USA)

200 x 145 x 50 mm

Part of the group Woolf I-IX.

now to be found in the collection:

[private] China

Full leather binding in yellow goatskin with mauve sewn headbands, leather joints, and silver endpapers. The book is housed in a chemise and lives in a slipcase.

 

The book's design is tooled in six shades of pigment foil (1x grey, 2x rose, and 3x green) and platinum leaf. The chemise is inlaid with green paper and decorated with narrow silver paper-inlays, and tooled with silver and pigment foil (1x rose). The slipcase is covered with silvery mauve paper and is lined with dark green Alcantara. All papers used are hand-dyed.

‘Night and Day’ is set in Edwardian London and contrasts the daily lives of two young women, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet. Being loosely acquainted, they come from two very different social backgrounds. Their ambitions, expectations of life, love, and success could not be further apart. One is a socialite, the other a worker fighting for women’s rights. Their lives cross, both forming attachments to the same men, but love does not quite work out.

bound 2011