First published in 1921 as part of her ground-breaking short-story collection Monday or Tuesday, Kew Gardens follows the thoughts of a set of characters walking past a flower bed in the royal botanic garden on a hot July day. Interweaving the thoughts of the characters with depictions of the natural world surrounding them, the narrative flows from mind to mind, from the tranquil flower bed to the bustling city outside. Written in Woolf's trademark style, brimming with keen observation and rich language, Kew Gardens is both a paean to the natural world and an empathetic exploration of human experience. 'The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble or the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or, falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear... Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.'

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Clarissa Dalloway is a woman of high-society - vivacious, hospitable and sociable on the surface, yet underneath troubled and dissatisfied with her life in post-war Britain. This disillusionment is an emotion that bubbles under the surface of all of Woolf's characters in Mrs Dalloway. Centred around one day in June where Clarissa is preparing for and holding a party, her interior monologue mingles with those of the other central characters in a stream of consciousness, entwining, yet never actually overriding the pervading sense of isolation that haunts each person. One of Virginia Woolf's most accomplished novels, Mrs Dalloway is widely regarded as one of the most revolutionary works of the 20th century in its style and the themes that it tackles. The sense that Clarissa has married the wrong person, her past love for another female friend and the death of an intended party guest all serve to amplify this stultifying existence.

In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock and is on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. Over the course of a single day, from first light to the dark of night, Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past, present, and future together, and recording, impression by impression, minute by minute, the feel of life itself.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Every summer, the Ramsays visit their summer home on the beautiful Isle of Skye, surrounded by the excitement and chatter of family and friends, mirroring Virginia Woolf's own joyful holidays of her youth. But as time passes, and in its wake the First World War, the transience of life becomes ever more apparent through the vignette of the thoughts and observations of the novel's disparate cast. A landmark of high modernism and the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels, To the Lighthouse explores themes of loss, class structure and the question of perception, in a hauntingly beautiful memorial to the lost but not forgotten. Chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.

First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word. With a measured but ardent tone, Woolf weaves together thought and quote, verse and prose into a moving tract on the power literature can have over its reader, in a way which still resounds with truth today. 'I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."'

Penned in 1925 during the aftermath of a nervous breakdown, On Being Ill is a groundbreaking essay by the Modernist giant Virginia Woolf that seeks to establish illness as a topic for discussion in literature. Delving into considerations of the loneliness and vulnerability experienced by those suffering from illness, as well as aspects of privilege others might have, the essay resounds with an honesty and clarity that still rings true today. 'Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza, epic poems to typhoid, odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no - with a few exceptions... literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent.'

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, 'Consume me' Six friends traverse the uneven road of life together in Virginia Woolf's most unconventional classic. Bernard, Jinny, Louis, Neville, Rhoda and Susan first meet as children by the sea, and their lives are forever changed. A poetic novel written in a lyrical way only Woolf could master, these narrators face both triumph and tragedy that touches them all. Throughout their lives, they examine the relationship between past and present, and the meaning of life itself. A landmark of innovative fiction and the most experimental of Virginia Woolf's novels, The Waves is still regarded as one of the greatest works ever written in the English language.

Virginia Woolf’s classic modernist novel, To the Lighthouse, draws from her own life and experiences.

Hailed as one of the greatest works of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf’s semi-autobiographical novel about the Ramsay family explores the themes of perspective, interpersonal relationships, and the complexity of human experience. Woolf’s use of shifting points of view in the narrative highlights how each person sees and experiences events in their own way.

As conflict and grief impact the Ramsays throughout their time on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, the reader is pulled into Woolf’s own life.

In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell shock and is on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax.   Over the course of a single day, Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past, present, and future together, and recording, minute by minute, the feel of life itself.    

Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.

With an introduction by Virginia Nicholson Saturday 2 February 1918. The first walk we've had for ever so long. Damp, mild vaporous day. Funeral bells tolling as we went out, & marriage as we came in. The streets lined with people waiting their meat. Aeroplanes droning invisible. Our usual evening, alone happily, knee deep in papers. This diary begins in January 1915. Virginia Woolf was about to publish her first novel, The Voyage Out. By the end of 1919 she had published many essays and reviews, as well as a second novel, Night and Day. Her diary was the counterpoint to that public writing: here she could record details of daily life, think about friends and reading, writing and her state of mind. This diary offers a unique insight into the life and mind of one of Britain's most influential writers, and the circle she was part of which came to be known as Bloomsbury. This new Granta edition includes Woolf's 'Asheham Diary' for the first time.