Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York 1925

143 x 199 x 38 mm

Part of the group Woolf I-IX.

now to be found in the collection:

[private] China

Full leather binding in dark aubergine goatskin with green sewn silk headbands, leather joints, and green bord-à-bord doublures, and silver flyleaves. The book is housed in a chemise and lives in a slipcase.

The book's design is tooled with three shades of silver foil, gunmetal, and five shades of coloured pigment foil (1x grey, 1x blue, and 2x green). The chemise is inlaid with green paper and tooled in three shades of silver foil and green pigment foil. The slipcase is covered with silver paper and lined with green Alcantara.

All papers used are hand-dyed.

In ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ Virginia Woolf portrays two main protagonists during the course of one day. Clarissa Dalloway is doing errands and preparing for her party in the evening; whilst young Septimus Warren Smith, a World War 1 veteran suffering from ‘shell shock’ and hallucinations, goes for a walk with his wife, later sees the doctors and subsequently takes his own life in the late afternoon. Although they don’t actually meet except for one chance encounter, their stories are seamlessly interwoven and form a singular shape, structured by the chiming of Big Ben. In this intense story, Virginia Woolf explores and pushes the boundaries of the ‘stream of consciousness’. One idea leads to the next, an impression triggers memories and the flow of the novel moves with great ease from one person to the next. A rich fabric of movement and life.

bound 2013