Wordsworth Classics. (In The Years & Between the Acts.) 2012, 256 p, including x p Notes and a xix p Introduction to both books by Linden Peach. Between the Acts was first published in 1941.

This was Woolf’s last novel, published posthumously. A prefatory note by her husband said it was completed but not corrected nor revised, though he believes she would not have made any large alterations. I beg to differ.

Like The Years (with which it is combined in this edition) this is more straightforward than Woolf’s earlier novels To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway. That doesn’t do much to recommend it though as what we are given here is a portrait of tiresome upper-middle class people doing and saying upper-middle class things but that could perhaps be borne were it not for the fact that the main part of the book is a struggle to get through as it contains a blow-by-blow account of a local pageant in all its lengthy tediousness.

In Linden Peach’s Introduction to Between the Acts he asserts that the novel is interrogating Englishness. If it does, it is only Englishness of a very narrow sort.

The text mentions an incidental character by describing him as “a Jew”, as if that said all there was to say about him.

Sensitivity note: as well as the gratuitous remark about “a Jew” we also encounter the phrases “worked like a nigger” and “white man’s burden.”

Pedant’s corner:- again the Notes explain references of which a British reader would be aware; Somerset House etc. Otherwise; “said Mrs Manresa ogling Candlish, as if he were a real man” (would be better punctuated as ‘said Mrs Manresa, ogling Candlish as if he were a ….’,) “it was a mellay” (usually spelled melé or mêlé,) “Mrs Rogers’ chin” (Mrs Rogers’s.) In the Notes: Sohrab and Rustum is said to be by Matthew Arnold. While he did write such a poem (and Woolf’s characters would undoubtedly have been familiar with it) the original story was in fact from Shanameh, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh) an epic poem by the Persian  Ferdowsi (Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi,) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdowsi) Daladier is said to have been Prime Minister of France from 1838-1840 (it was 1938-40.) “Il Rissorgimento” (Risorgimento.)

Penguin, 1996, 211 p.

This tells the events of one day leading up to the throwing of a party by the titular Mrs (Clarissa) Dalloway which may, or may not, be being attended by the Prime Minister. That title might lead you to believe that the book’s main focus will be Clarissa but it is not. It is written in the stream of consciousness style but that too is a misnomer as what we have here is really streams of consciousnesses since the narration flits from one character to another like a gadfly, rarely settling down for long. This is immensely irritating to begin with but in time, with familiarity, becomes less so.

As well as Mrs Dalloway we enter the thoughts of Peter Walsh, recently returned from India and a failed marriage but declaring himself to be in love for the first time, and Rezia and Septimus Smith, wife and husband. Walsh it seems had a thing for Clarissa in their youths, later musing he had been so in love with her then. (So what was that “first time” declaration all about?) Septimus has not recovered from his experiences in the Great War and his disturbed state has tragically not been recognised by various medical practitioners, nor by his wife.

I know Woolf has received praise for her writing and was an early user of stream of consciousness (a pioneer, indeed) but there is something detached about her style which I find difficult to engage with. My reaction to this book is the same as it was with To The Lighthouse.

This copy was loaned to us by a friend who has written in the margin that Woolf was trying to erase the narrator as a persona. On this evidence, replacing a narrator with many personas isn’t much of an improvement. I’ll not be in a hurry to read any more Woolf.

Pedant’s corner:- sprung (sprang, which was used later,) waggons (wagons,) Hatchards’ (either Hatchard’s or Hatchards’s,) Jorrocks’ (Jorrocks’s,) plaguy (plaguey?) a missing full stop, missing commas before pieces of direct speech (too numerous to count,) Kinloch Jones’s (this was a plural, hence Kinloch Joneses,) “They rose .And Richard” (They rose. And Richard”,) “Mrs Peters’ hat” (Mrs Peters’s,) campare (compare,) “did not use to rouge” (did not used to rouge.)