Here are 76 books that Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway fans have personally recommended if you like
Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
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After 15 years as a screenwriter (and some heartbreaking near misses with the big screen), I turned my pen to novel writing, with an adaptation of a script I’d sold four times. My new book, Love and Fury: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft, is hot off the press this year and tells the story of one of the great writers and thinkers of the late 18th century, mother of Mary Shelley, and widely regarded as the mother of feminism. I’m drawn to larger-than-life, brilliant, charismatic, complicated figures whose own trajectories have altered our own. I’m now at work on a collection of short stories and an adaptation of Mr. Dickens and His Carol for the stage.
This book became a kind of hymnal for me during the writing of Love and Fury. It was Virginia Woolf who in 1929 resurrected Mary Wollstonecraft’s reputation and legacy, buried for a century because a tell-all memoir written by her widower, William Godwin, scandalized the world. It seemed natural to turn to Woolf, who found inspiration in Wollstonecraft’s “experiments in living”. I read a section of the diary every day before I started to write. Woolf’s profound creative visions, her anguish, and passions, her voice, helped me locate Wollstonecraft and my own voice in hers.
An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years.
Included are entries that refer to her own writing, and those that are relevant to the raw material of her work, and, finally, comments on the books she was reading. The first entry included here is dated 1918 and the last, three weeks before her death in 1941. Between these points of time unfolds the private world—the anguish, the triumph, the creative vision—of one of the great writers of the twentieth century.
When I was 12, I was given The Book of Questionsby Neruda Pablo. “Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress?” It was the perfect book for me, with an abundance of questions. As I got older, the questions turned more serious: what are these forces restricting women to a narrow strip of being? To a slim wedge of psychological existence? How did the definition of female pare down to only a fistful of traits—nurturing, accommodating, object of desire, etc.? I’ve found solace in books, with fully dimensional female characters who refuse society’s common assumptions. It’s these females I try to create in my work.
Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers, not that I write like her, (I wish I had more of her style, for sure) but for her courage and creative will that stretched her work beyond the boundaries of what existed at the time. Along the way, you can pick out the raw material of her life that she transmuted into fiction. What great fortune to hear directly from Virginia about her philosophy of life and her vision of art.
Moments of Being is “the single most moving and beautiful thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote about her own life” (The New York Times) and her only autobiographical writing, published years after her death. This collection of five pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades reveals the remarkable unity of Virginia Woolf’s art, thought, and sensibility.? “Reminiscences,” written during her apprenticeship period, exposes the childhood shared by Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, while “A Sketch of the Past” illuminates the relationship with her father, Leslie Stephens, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual a…
I am the author of three books, all featuring characters who feel like outsiders; some are queer, many are artists, most are people of color. I was lucky enough to grow up around artists, in a community where creativity was valued. I wrote poems and invented card games, put on plays in our living room, and made up stories to fall asleep at night. I knew I was an artist before I knew the word queer. When I came out, my outsider status doubled; I wanted to know how other queer artists and writers navigated these dual identities—how they not only survived but thrived. Their stories are my story.
I was obsessed with this novel when it first came out, and every time I go back to it, it offers me another gift.
The writing is lean yet elegant, a perfect combination to tell such a heartbreaking story—of three women connected through time by Virginia Woolf’s singular novelMrs. Dalloway.
It’s a book about how to sustain ourselves through challenging times—how to literally survive—but it’s also a treatise on creating remarkable characters, the call to be an artist, and a rare glimpse into the imagined writing process of one of the English language’s greatest wordsmiths. (I’m referring to Woolf, but I could just as easily be talking about Cunningham.)
The structure is inventive and compelling, but it is really what he shows us of the characters, how he opens their hearts and whispers their secret sorrows into our eager ears, desires they barely understand themselves, that makes this…
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and Pen Faulkner prize. Made into an Oscar-winning film, 'The Hours' is a daring and deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.
In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel.
A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of 'Mrs Dalloway'.
And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a party…
For most of my life no one guessed I could fall for a dog, much less write a book about one. I associated dogs with drool on the floor and fur all over everything. One of those “just a dog” people, I thought the marriage bed should be strictly for humans. It crossed my mind that an eager dog would keep me from working into the night at the office where I ran Chatelaine, Canada’s premier magazine for women, but I chose a treadmill at the Y over rambles with a dog. At 65 I discovered my inner dog person. A ragged-eared mutt is now my joy and my muse.
Pete the Irish Wheaten was supposed to comfort the children as their father lay dying of cancer. But it was their mother, author/illustrator Maira Kalman, who became his inseparable companion, following the pup into a whole new world of humor, heart, and inspiration.
Through Pete, she discovered the dogs of Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, and E.B. White—all captured in these pages with her customary wit and radiance. You’re never too old for a picture book, and if you have a soft spot for dogs, this one deserves a permanent spot on your nightstand.
Beloved Dog shows that “the most tender, uncomplicated, most generous part of our being blossoms, without any effort, when it comes to the love of a dog.”
Maira Kalman, with wit and great sensitivity, reveals why dogs bring out the best in us
Maira Kalman + Dogs = Bliss
Dogs have lessons for us all. In Beloved Dog, renowned artist and author Maira Kalman illuminates our cherished companions as only she can. From the dogs lovingly illustrated in her acclaimed children's books to the real-life pets who inspire her still, Kalman's Beloved Dog is joyful, beautifully illustrated, and, as always, deeply philosophical.
Here is Max Stravinsky, the dog poet of Oh-La-La (Max in Love)-fame, and her own Irish Wheaton Pete (almost named Einstein, until he revealed himself…
My twenty novels tend to focus on characters who face great challenges, and I have a particular appreciation for beautiful prose. I don’t read for distraction or entertainment, but to be enlightened, moved, and made more compassionate about different kinds of people in different environments.
I sometimes enjoy novels in which the action is mainly interior. Not a lot happens here, but Virginia Woolf had a deep grasp of human psychology and a luminous prose style, and her characters just leap off the page. I could linger over sentences and pages for long minutes and have read this multiple times.
I always come away from her work with a greater appreciation for the amazing miracle of simply being alive on this earth and for the beauty of the English language.
The working title of Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours. The novel began as two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". It describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.
In October 2005, Mrs. Dalloway was included on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.
I’m a lawyer. One thing effective trial attorneys learn to do is become “pretend experts” in any area necessary for a case. It might be orthopedic medicine, commercial building design, auto accident reconstruction, or a thousand other subjects. In 1996, when I started writing my first novel, The List, I decided to become a “pretend expert” in the field of story-telling. Twenty books later, I’ve worked hard to make the transition to actual expert, someone who’s studied the craft of writing so I can create a story with professionalism and skill. These books aren’t the only ones I’ve read on this topic, but they’re some of the best.
This is the book that enabled me to make the transition from legal writer to novelist. I purchased it at an aspiring writer’s conference without knowing it was well-respected in the publishing industry. I quickly liked the clearly stated, practical guidelines: show not tell, resist the urge to explain, what is point of view, dialogue that works, easy beats. And the book contains humorous illustrations by George Booth. Every writer needs a laugh in the midst of giving birth.
Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.
In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point…
I’m from Mauritius, of Indian heritage, and proudly African. I remember reading my first chick-lit romance circa 2001, thinking Mauritius has everything—the drama, the over-the-top characters, love matches, exciting backdrops both physical & cultural—to create great rom-coms & uplifting fiction…but where were such stories? A decade later, I was helping other African authors showcase their feel-good books by creating an imprint dedicated to African romance with a US publisher. I’m an author who loves to write about her country & life experiences, and I have the perfect day job for a bookworm as an editor who specializes in editing romance stories for indie authors & publishers alike.
Imagine if Bridget Jones had been African–Nigerian, to be more precise, and instead of just a nosy/meddling mother, she had a huge Yoruba family to contend with! I absolutely adored the POV of the heroine, Nifemi, in this tale! I could read her stream-of-consciousness chapter starts forever and not be bored.
Feyi Aina writes with humour and that special touch of "down to Earth" that makes her heroine resonate. Anyone with a big, traditional family–whether Nigerian, Indian, or even Irish–will totally get Nifemi and her struggle to find what love means and where it’s waiting for her.
These books are all by or about comic geniuses. I have always expressed myself through humor. I never felt I was pretty, so making people laugh was another way of seducing people. I started out by doing improvisational theater on the streets of New York, went on to have a recurring role on Seinfeld, and performed my solo shows on three continents. One of my greatest thrills has been to share the stage with other storytellers while touring with The Moth. When I used my storytelling skills on TikTok, I was amazed at the response. Eleven million Likes is a lot of love. I hope I deserve it.
I first discovered this writer through her blog, The Bloggess. I admired her frank, weird, obscene imagination then – and I still do, now that she’s become a best-selling author.
Her childhood in rural Texas could not be more different than mine in the urban Bronx, but she still feels like a kindred spirit. I love the way she navigates through childhood, marriage, pregnancy, and work while not allowing her physical and psychological issues to limit her in any way.
One of those issues is being phobic, and that’s something I can relate to. You name it, I’m afraid of it!
Even when I was funny, I wasn't this funny' Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors
Have you ever embarrassed yourself so badly you thought you'd never get over it?
Have you ever wished your family could be just like everyone else's?
Have you ever been followed to school by your father's herd of turkeys, mistaken a marriage proposal for an attempted murder or got your arm stuck inside a cow? OK, maybe that's just Jenny Lawson . . .
The bestselling memoir from one of America's most outlandishly hilarious writers.
I write historical crime fiction, and my latest novel is set in a hospital, a real place, now closed. The South London Hospital for Women and Children (1912–1985) was set up by pioneering suffragists and women surgeons Maud Chadburn and Eleanor Davies-Colley (the first woman admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons) and I recreate the now almost-forgotten hospital in my book. Events take place in 1946 when wartime trauma still impacts upon a society exhausted by conflict, and my book choices also reflect this.
This book’s celebration of rebelliousness of spirit and anti-institutionalism is why I like it.
Set in a psychiatric hospital, like Regeneration, its medical staff are closer in spirit to Dr. Yealland in that book, who prefers inflicting pain in order to cure than to the humane Dr. Rivers. I enjoyed the humour and the scandalous behaviour of McMurphy, the sane con-man in the asylum who battles the authoritarian and controlling Nurse Ratched. It is very much in the spirit of the anti-establishment 1960s when it was written.
Other inmates rebel too and draw down Ratched’s ire upon themselves, leading to suicide, and McMurphy attacks Ratched because, however rebellious, he cannot stomach this tragedy. There is a sad and bleak end for him, as ‘authority’ wins out. The ending is one of hope, but not for McMurphy. Like the other books on my list so far, this, too, was filmed.
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Now in a new deluxe edition with a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk and cover by Joe Sacco, here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them…
Becoming a mother reshaped me in ways I’m still wondering at now, two decades on. I’ve had to find ways to resist the repressive cultural mythology surrounding motherhood—the pressure I felt to suddenly become a perfect, self-sacrificing vessel for my children’s optimized development. When I read stories about flawed mothers—women, queer and straight, struggling beneath the magnitude of the job, yet fiercely loving their children all the way through—I felt I could breathe a little bit, could handle the task with a little more good humor and forgiveness, for myself, my partner, and my kids. Read a book, bust a myth, go hug your mom.
Maggie Nelson just dazzles me. Her prose is so sharp and thoughtful, her thinking so idiosyncratically brilliant, her images filled with light. The Argonauts is both memoir and inquiry, a story of how Nelson and her partner Harry, who is in the midst of a gender transition, became parents, a story fraught with obstacles and veined with wisdom. Nelson’s voice mixes erudition, visceral power—especially when she writes about sex and the body—and formal innovation. The Argonauts caused a splash when it came out, and for good reason—its unflinchingly honest portrayal of one queer couple’s creation of family together is beautiful, brave, and yes, deeply fierce.
An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. It binds an account of Nelson's relationship with her partner and a journey to and through a pregnancy to a rigorous exploration of sexuality, gender, and "family." An insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.
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