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The Waves
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Virginia Woolf |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Vanessa Bell |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Experimental novel |
| Publisher | Hogarth Press |
Publication date | October 8, 1931 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 324 |
The Waves is a 1931 novel by English novelist Virginia Woolf. It is critically regarded as her most experimental work,[1] consisting of ambiguous and cryptic soliloquies spoken mainly by six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis.[2] Percival, a seventh character, appears in the soliloquies, though readers never hear him speak in his own voice.
The dialogues that span the characters' lives are broken up by nine brief third-person interludes detailing a coastal scene at varying stages in a day from sunrise to sunset. As the six characters or "voices" speak, Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self and community. “Each character is distinct, yet together they compose a gestalt about a silent central consciousness”, according to a reviewer.[3]
In a 2015 poll conducted by the BBC, The Waves was voted the 16th greatest British novel ever written.[4]
- ^ Goldman, Jane. "From Mrs Dalloway to The Waves: New elegy and lyric experimentalism." The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Susan Sellers. Second Edition, 2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.49
- ^ Roe, Sue; Susan Sellers (8 May 2000). The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Cambridge University Press. p. 308. ISBN 0-521-62548-3.
- ^ Klitgård, Ida. 2004. On the Horizon: A Poetics of the Sublime in Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Bethesda, MD: Academica Press.
- ^ "The 100 greatest British novels". BBC. 7 December 2015. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
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