Jacob's Room - Couverture souple

Woolf, Virginia

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 055321490X ISBN 13 : 9780553214901

Editeur : Bantam Classic & Loveswept, 1999

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Jacob's Room is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 26 October 1922.

The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob (except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective). Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms.

Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel. Jacob is described to us, but in such indirect terms that it would seem better to view him as an amalgamation of the different perceptions of the characters and narrator. He does not exist as a concrete reality, but rather as a collection of memories and sensations.

Literary significance

The novel is a departure from Woolf's earlier two novels, The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919), which are more conventional in form and narration. The work is seen as an important modernist text; its experimental form is viewed as a progression of the innovative writing style Woolf presented in her earlier collection of short fiction titled Monday or Tuesday (1919).

Quatrième de couverture

First published in 1922, Jacob s Room was Virginia Woolf s third novel and the first in her more experimental mode. Set in the years leading up to the First World War, the work is an elegy, not just for an individual character, but for a generation lost in and affected by the war.

This Shakespeare Head Press edition restores the text to its original form, notably recreating the space breaks on the page with which Woolf deliberately fragmented her narrative. The editor provides an extensive introduction, discussing the genesis of the novel, its biographical elements, the process of composition and revision, and the history of its early critical reception. A series of notes helps the reader to identify references and allusions, from sponge–bag trousers and gold beater s skin to Tonks and Steer, and the Hampstead Garden Suburbs; while an appendix lists variants between the first UK and first US editions of the work.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bantam Classic & Loveswept
• Date d'édition: 1999
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 055321490X
• ISBN 13: 9780553214901
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible