The Voyage Out.

WOOLF, Virginia.

$2,250.00

Item Number: 129080

London: Duckworth, 1927.

Early printing of Woolf’s first novel. Octavo, original cloth. Very good in the rare original dust jacket which has been restored. Uncommon in the original jacket.

Woolf began work on The Voyage Out by 1910 and had finished an early draft by 1912. The novel had a long and difficult gestation; it was not published until 1915, as it was written during a period in which Woolf was especially psychologically vulnerable. She suffered from periods of depression and at one point attempted suicide. The resultant work contained the seeds of all that would blossom in her later work: the innovative narrative style, the focus on feminine consciousness, sexuality and death. Writing in 1926, E. M. Forster described it as "... a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis". Reviewing the book a decade earlier, he wrote this: "It is absolutely unafraid... Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path."