Set on a hot London day in June 1923, Mrs Dalloway explores both the raw hold of the past and the brighter potential of the future. Clarissa Dalloway is the wife of an MP and an assured socialite, yet as she prepares for her party the links between her and the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith become ever more apparent. Mrs Dalloway is a book that is both highly experimental and deeply involving, deftly impressionistic yet firmly embedded in thecrowded world of London. This new edition based on original research offers fresh insights into the context and meanings of one of Woolf’s most popular and enduring works.