The Years
by Virginia Woolf
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good
- Seller
-
BATH, Somerset, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
A stirring, straightforward work written near the end of her luminous career, Virginia Woolf's *The Years* is a portrait of the Pargiters, a staid London family presided over by Colonel Abel Pargiter. In some ways, "portrait" is not an entirely appropriate word, because Woolf's subject in this novel (and an abiding concern in all of her works) is fluidity and flux: the movement of the seasons and years, the experience of maturing and growing old, and the pain of change, passing, and loss. Although it spans a fifty year period, it is not an epic novel in the sense that Mann's [*Buddenbrooks*][1] or Tolstoy's [*War and Peace*][2] are epic. The fifty years under consideration in *The Years* are not continuously narrated; instead, the novel deals with only certain years-1880, 1891, 1908, 1911, 1914, 1917 and "The Present Day" - punctuated with large gaps of time in between. At each new juncture, the reader is left to surmise what has happened in the intervening time with little assistance from a controlling narrative presence. Although *The Years* is written in the third person, the novel's narrative voice roves among the point of view of different characters fluidly, and recounts the events of the past through memory and dialogue rather than through a third-person summation. Leaping over years and even decades - as the novel does - infuses it with a sense of time's rapid, relentless movement, as the reader watches characters age significantly with the turn of a few pages. The subject matter of *The Years* is also decidedly not epic, but it is what gives the novel its remarkable power. Although it does discuss what might be termed monumental events in the lives of its characters, such as the death of Mrs. Pargiter in the first chapter, the novel leaves out many events that might seem particularly noteworthy, such as the birth of a child, a courtship, or a wedding. These traditional milestones are often consigned to the blank, unnarrated stretches of time that pass between the chapters. Woolf instead focuses our attention on smaller, less self-evidently significant moments of experience: a girl writing a letter to her brother, a college student sipping a glass of port and studying ancient Greek, the goodnights exchanged after a dinner party. These tiny moments exist in a tension against the sweep of seasons, years, and lives passing in the background, and this ever-present tension is what makes the novel ultimately so disquieting and so moving. Not only does the book's structure keep us constantly aware of the time's march, but also many of the smaller details - the sound of cars moving in the streets, the sight of a hearth fire dying, a gust of wind and rain - subtly keep an atmosphere of change, flow, and passing defining the experience of the characters. The things that lend a sense of fixity to life, such as rank, employment, or marriage, or those things that pass for it, such as a painting, a text, or a sentimentalized object, are touchstones for Woolf as well. The discord between the desire for stasis and the inevitability of change in many ways defines the novel, and is everywhere evidenced in the very environment in which the characters live and breathe. [1]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL14867081W/Buddenbrooks [2]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL267129W/Vo%C4%ADna_i_mir
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Details
- Bookseller
- Rooke Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 839P23
- Title
- The Years
- Author
- Virginia Woolf
- Illustrator
- None
- Format/Binding
- Cloth
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1937
- Size
- 7" by 5"
- Keywords
- The Years Virginia woolf bloomsbury group Virginia woolf
Terms of Sale
Rooke Books
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About the Seller
Rooke Books
About Rooke Books
We are a small team dedicated to bringing you very scarce books at reasonable prices. We specialise in rare and hard to come by works on all subjects over the last 500 years, together with modern first editions and decorative sets and bindings. Our library has something for every interest and specialism. We deliver worldwide using a fully tracked and insured courier delivery service.
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Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tail
- The heel of the spine.
- Publisher's cloth
- A hardcover book comprised of cloth over hard pasteboard boards. ...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
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- The portion of the book closest to the spine that allows the book to be opened and closed.
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...