Books

First edition, first printing. One of 2000 copies. Publisher's deep rust cloth, gilt lettering to spine; in its original cream-colored dust jacket, printed in black and white, and designed by Vanessa Bell. Fine book, with just some light offsetting to endpapers, and novelist Dennis Wheatley's bookplate to front pastedown; fine unclipped dust jacket, with a few small closed tears to panel edges, very shallow chipping to spine ends, light toning and a touch of staining to spine, panels remarkably bright and clean with just a hint of soiling to rear panel, and a tiny chip to front flap fold. Overall, an exemplary copy of arguably Virginia Woolf's greatest novel. Housed in a custom quarter leather box with folding chemise. Kirkpatrick A9a. Woolmer 82. One of the author's best-known novels, Mrs. Dalloway tells the story of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to host a high-society party. The text is a compilation of two of Woolf's short stories "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and "The Prime Minister." A stream of consciousness narrative, Mrs. Dalloway follows the protagonist from her decision to "buy the flowers herself" at the start of the day through the completion of her party in the evening. Throughout the novel, Woolf explores the impact of mental illness on daily life, both in Mrs. Dalloway, who reveals that she is being treated for depression, and a second leading character, Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD who chooses to commit suicide rather than face involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital. Like many of Woolf's novels, the text is centered on philosophy and perception rather than action sequences and dialogue; John W. Crawford agrees in his New York Times Review that "One day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway" is the complete story of Mrs. Woolf's new novel, yet she contrives to enmesh all the inflections of Mrs. Dalloway's personality, and many of the implications of modern civilization, in the account of those twenty-four hours. Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) was a writer of thrillers and occult novels who was enormously popular from the 1930s to 1960s, selling more than 20 million books. His most successful series were the Duke de Richleau series, Roger Brook series, and Gregory Sallust series. For the Sallust series - a spy series set during World War II - Wheatley drew on his personal experience as a member of British Intelligence in World War II. Notably, Ian Fleming is believed to have used George Sallust as a model for his own fictional spy, James Bond. Wheatley was an avid book collector, and his personal collection of 2,274 books, many of which were modern first editions, was first acquired by Oxford's Blackwell's in 1979.

Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925. It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.