The Waves (Oxford World’s Classics)

Intensely visionary yet absorbed with the everyday, experimental, daring and challenging, The Waves is regarded by many as Virginia Woolf’s greatest achievement. It follows a set of six friends from childhood to middle age as they experience the world around them and explore who they are and what it means to be alive. As the contours of their lives are revealed, a unique novel is slowly unveiled. Enfolded within Woolf’s lyrical and mysterious language, the mundane takes on a startling new significance while distant pasts are no less in play than the clamorous sounds and kaleidoscopic sights of the modern city. Yet precisely where the alluringly enigmatic pages of The Waves are leading and what deeper meanings are held within its undulant chapters and shimmering interludes, are questions that have never ceased to enthral readers and critics alike.
This volume follows as closely as possible the chronological order of composition, highlighting autobiographical elements including the young Wilde’s conflicting attitudes to Greece and Rome, pagan and Christian, and his fluctuating attraction to Roman Catholicism. The Appendix shows Wilde’s original ordering, constructed with great care around a ‘musical’ arrangement of themes. The poems reveal unexpected aspects of a literary chameleon usually identified with sparkling wit and social comedy.