Showing results by author "Virginia" in All Categories

Written for Virginia Woolf's friend, the charismatic writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is a playful mock 'biography' of a chameleonic historical figure, immortal and ageless, who changes sex and identity on a whim. First masculine, then feminine, Orlando begins life as a young 16th-century nobleman, then gallops through three centuries to end up as a woman writer in Virginia Woolf's own time. A wry commentary on gender roles and modes of history, Orlando is also, in Woolf's own words, a light-hearted 'writer's holiday' which delights in ambiguity and capriciousness.

In the dark and uncertain days of 1941 and 1942, when Rommel's tanks were sweeping towards Suez, a handful of daring raiders were making history for the Allies. They operated deep behind the German lines, often driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa. They hid by day and struck by night, destroying aircraft, blowing up ammunition dumps, derailing trains, and killing many times their own number.

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

To the Lighthouse is a landmark work of English fiction. Virginia Woolf explores perception and meaning in some of the most beautiful prose ever written, minutely detailing the characters thoughts and impressions. This unabridged version is read by Juliet Stevenson.

Three months after the killer rain first fell, Ruby is beginning to realise that she cannot survive alone. When a chance encounter lands her back in the army camp, Ruby thinks she is safe. But being safe has a price, and if Ruby wants to stay she must keep her eyes - and her mouth - shut.

Rachel Vinrace, Virginia Woolf's first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at 24, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who wishes to teach Rachel "how to live." Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates.

As a pioneering female correspondent, she reported from Europe from the 1930s into the Second World War, watching 'the lights in the death-chamber go out one by one' from the frontline - always in the right place at the right time. Flinging off her heels under shellfire; meeting Hitler ('an inconspicuous little man') and the 'dapper' Mussolini; gossiping with Churchill by his goldfish pond or dancing in the bomb-blasted Ritz; reading The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism on a Soviet train or eating reindeer with guerrilla skiers....

Diana Merriwell and Giles Sinclair only tolerate one another for the sake of their nearest and dearest. Everyone believes that they are meant to be together, but Diana and Giles know that it is animosity, not attraction, that fuels their barbed exchanges. Anyway, Diana loves her freedom too much to give it up for marriage, and Giles is happily wedded to his bachelor lifestyle. After Giles' curmudgeonly father, the Duke of Harpenden, unexpectedly turns up his toes, it's only a matter of time before the circumstances of his only son's birth are revealed.

Eureka "Trinket" Truevine, the newest Diva, gets more than she bargained for when she finds her best Diva girlfriend Bitty Hollandale's ex-husband in Bitty's hall closet. He's dead. Very dead. Now Trinket and the Divas have to help Bitty finger the murderer and clear her name.

Gayle was the beauty who believed that a man could make her life complete. Patricia was the intellectual who thought that rising to the top of her career would make her happy. And then there is Marcus Carter, who has been linked to both Gayle and Pat since the tragedy that occurred when they were all children. Can either one save him from himself? Can friends survive a love that comes between them? Each of them gets what she wants, but no one counts on the price they have to pay.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.

At just under five feet tall, Virginia Prodan was no match for the towering six-foot-ten-inch, gun-wielding assassin the Romanian government sent to her office to take her life. It was not the first time her life had been threatened - nor would it be the last. As a young attorney under Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal communist regime, Virginia had spent her entire life searching for the truth.

CEO Aiden Kelley's life of billionaire extravagance is flipped upside down when his ex shows up with a 10-year-old she claims is his. Totally out of his element and losing the control so integral to his success, he needs help. To top it all off, the only constant woman in his life, his executive assistant, has given notice just when he needs her help to survive his newfound fatherhood.

This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

The Ultimate Modern Classics Collection: Volume One is the first instalment in our classics collection focusing on the most important and iconic novels, stories, and poems of the 20th century. Featuring 18 essential modern classics from Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and many more, and read by a cast of incredible narrators including Iwan Rheon, Ben Allen, Karen Cass, Nathan Osgood, amongst others, this is an essential addition to your library.

Feather Tucker has two wishes: To get her mum healthy again. To win the Junior UK swimming championships. When Feather comes home on New Year's Eve to find her mother - one of Britain's most obese women- in a diabetic coma, she realises something has to be done to save her mum's life. But when her mum refuses to cooperate, Feather realises that the problem runs deeper than just her mum's unhealthy appetite.

Virginia Howes was a mother of four doing the ironing when she had a revelation. Still broody, but not really wanting to add to her family, she realised that becoming a midwife was her true vocation. It was a long journey to get the education and qualifications she needed, especially with a young family, but she was determined and never doubted her decision. Following her training, she spent three years working within the NHS, but her naturally independent spirit fought against the constraints of the system and 12 years ago she decided to set up on her own.

It has been two weeks, and now Ruby is totally alone. People weren’t prepared for the rain, got caught out in it, didn’t realise that you couldn’t drink water from the taps either. Even a drip of rain would infect your blood and eat you from the inside out. Ruby sets off on a journey that will take her the length of the country – surviving in the only way she knows how.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." These were the words that defined Fitzwilliam Darcy's young life. Any measure of integrity, honor, loyalty—these were secondary considerations to the size of a bachelor's estate. The only lady to esteem his genuine character was now lost forever, and he must face his future alone.

Too young to be whisked away by a Stannah Stairlift or to enjoy the luxury of a walk-in-bath, Marie Sharp is horrified when a friend suggests she join a bookclub as she turns 60. Bookclub people feel they must poke their brain with a pointed stick to keep it working - they're as bad as oldies who cycle across Mongolia in their 80s or paraglide in their 90s. As far as Marie is concerned, they're tragic failures who haven't come to terms with ageing.