London: The Hogarth Press, 1927. First edition. Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in gilt, top edge yellow. With the dust jacket, designed by Vanessa Bell. Very mild sunning to cloth spine through the jacket, some light rubbing to extremities only, spotting to edges and occasional foxing within, but the copy smart and sound, and the jacket itself in exceptionally fresh condition, notwithstanding some mild spots and minor tears to corners, extraordinarily vivid both in the white background and the blue titles both to sides and particularly the spine (which is invariably tanned and dulled), excellent.

First edition, first impression, with an exceptionally fresh and vividly coloured example of the Vanessa Bell-designed dust jacket, entirely free from restoration, rare thus. Published two years after Mrs. Dalloway and three years before The Waves, To the Lighthouse "displays Woolf's technique of narrating through stream of consciousness and imagery at its most assured, rich, and suggestive" (Drabble). It was "written at the height of her luminous Impressionist vision... It is the sunniest of her books and shows the obsession with rendering the passage of time which dominated her later work" (Connolly).

Connolly, The Modern Movement 54; Kirkpatrick A10; Woolmer, Hogarth Press, 154.

Woolf’s modernist masterpiece, perhaps her most important novel. To the Lighthouse, published in 1927, follows two visits of the Ramsey family, a decade apart, to the Isle of Skye. The book, however, is noted less for its plot than for Woolf’s radical style and presentation of perspective, including her depiction of time. Woolf drew from much of her own life for inspiration for the novel, and certain characteristics of the Ramseys often echo aspects of Woolf's own parents and relations. Indeed the character of Lily Briscoe, the painter, is often thought of as a stand in for Woolf herself, her struggles with art mirroring Woolf’s own. To the Lighthouse appears on both Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century and TIME magazine's list of the one best English-language novels from 1923 onward. "Nothing happens, and everything happens…indeed more beauty and penetrative characterization than can here be described resides within this book..." (Contemporary Review in The Spectator) About Fine in About Fine dust jacket. (Item #4084)