Characters

• Clarissa Dalloway: The 51-year-old protagonist who is planning a party. She is upper-class, self-conscious about her role in society, and often reminisces about her past.
• Septimus Warren Smith: A World War I veteran suffering from shell shock. He struggles with hallucinations and mental illness, feeling detached from society.
• Richard Dalloway: Clarissa's husband, a practical and somewhat distant man who works in government.
• Peter Walsh: Clarissa's old friend and former suitor who has recently returned from India. He still harbors feelings for Clarissa.
• Sally Seton: Clarissa's old friend with whom she shared a kiss in her youth. Now married with children, she attends Clarissa's party.
• Elizabeth Dalloway: Clarissa and Richard's 17-year-old daughter who is more interested in politics and history than social affairs.
• Lucrezia Warren Smith: Septimus's Italian wife who feels burdened by his mental illness and isolated in England.
• Miss Kilman: Elizabeth's history tutor, a born-again Christian who dislikes Clarissa but enjoys spending time with Elizabeth.
• Hugh Whitbread: A pompous friend of the Dalloways who holds an unspecified position in the British Royal household.
• Sir William Bradshaw: A prominent psychiatrist who treats Septimus and recommends he be institutionalized.

Quick facts

• The working title of the book was The Hours, which later became the title of Michael Cunningham's novel inspired by Mrs. Dalloway.
• The character of Septimus Smith was not in Woolf's original plan for the novel - she added him later as a “double” for Clarissa Dalloway.
• Woolf was inspired to use the stream-of-consciousness style after reading James Joyce's Ulysses, though she denied any deliberate imitation.
• The novel explores themes of mental illness, feminism, existentialism, and bisexuality/homosexuality.
• Woolf based the character of Clarissa Dalloway partly on her friend Kitty Maxse.
• Big Ben serves as an important symbol and motif in the novel, marking the passage of time throughout the day.
• Woolf wrote most of the novel at her country home in Sussex, England.
• The book was published on May 14, 1925 by Hogarth Press, run by Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
• In 2005, TIME magazine included Mrs. Dalloway on its list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

About the author

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was one of the foremost modernist writers of the 20th century. Born into an affluent intellectual family in London, Woolf suffered from mental health issues throughout her life but managed to produce groundbreaking novels, essays, and criticism. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), as well as the feminist essays A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938).

Woolf was a pioneer in using stream of consciousness as a narrative technique, capturing the flow of thoughts and impressions in her characters' minds. Her writing style was lyrical and experimental, often focusing on the inner lives of her characters rather than external events. Along with her husband Leonard, Woolf founded the Hogarth Press in 1917, which published works by T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, and Woolf herself.

As a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and intellectuals, Woolf was part of the British cultural vanguard in the early 20th century. She explored themes of gender, class, and creativity in her work, and her writings have been influential in feminist literary criticism. However, Woolf has also been criticized for some of her views on class and race expressed in her private writings.

Woolf's mental health deteriorated during World War II, and she took her own life in 1941 by drowning herself in the River Ouse. Despite her tragic end, Woolf's literary legacy has endured. Her novels and essays continue to be widely read and studied, and she remains an iconic figure in modernist literature and feminist thought.