The Waves.
“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing": First Edition of Virginia Woolf's The Waves
The Waves.
WOOLF, Virginia.
$2,000.00
Item Number: 139435
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931.
First edition of Woolf’s most experimental novel. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Vanessa Bell. Housed in a custom half morocco slipcase. Uncommon in the original dust jacket.
Considered by many to be Woolf's most experimental novel, The Waves contains a series of soliloquies spoken by the book's six primary characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis, each fiercely individual yet together forming a central, universal consciousness. Literary scholar Frank N. Magill ranked the novel one of the 200 best books of all time in his reference book, Masterpieces of World Literature and in a 2015 poll conducted by BBC, The Waves was voted the 16th greatest British novel ever written.
