Publisher's Synopsis
The Shakespeare Head Press Edition of The Voyage Out is based on a careful consideration of all the versions of the text published during Woolf′s lifetime and an examination of a privately–owned copy that Woolf herself marked for revision.
First novels often reveal the conflicting ambitions that are less apparent, if no less influential, in later works. Virginia Woolf′s The Voyage Out is no exception: it anticipates the themes and methods of her career. The long and difficult composition of the novel took place during the period when she married Leonard Woolf. The novel itself explores a young woman′s first experience of adult love, and more specifically biographical speculations are encouraged by veiled allusions to Woolf′s friends, family and their preoccupations.
But the novel is interesting not only as a biographical document or as a point of departure for Woolf′s later works. The Voyage Out presents a thoughtful and distinctively modern analysis of personal and social possibilities. The story of Rachel Vinrace′s discovery of a love that is neither reductively sexual nor archaically sentimental is set against the precise delineation of a variety of private lives and social relationships.
In their introduction the editors explore Woolf′s adaptation of traditional forms to express innovative themes and attitudes and show how the novel prefigures Woolf′s later concern with the connections between art and life. The text is supplemented by detailed annotations and an apparatus listing all variants and emendations.
