All you read a novel for is to see what sort of person the writer is, and, if you know him, which of his friends he’s put in. But the difficulty is immense.’ He sighed. ‘I want to write a novel about Silence,’ he said ‘the things people don’t say. In The Voyage Out we find Woolf satirising Edwardian society and foregrounding silences, gaps, and what is not said (which is a typically modernist trope). The novel does contain many elements which we find in her more out-and-out modernist work – use of free indirect style, experimenting with narrative perspective, and interest in dream-states and problems of vision – and it shows Woolf already attempting to write something different from other writers, especially her Edwardian forebears, the trinity of Bennett, Galsworthy, and Wells whom she famously rubbished in her 1919 essay ‘Modern Fiction’. However, just because The Voyage Out is not typically modernist, that does not mean that it is not a modern novel. The trademark Woolfian style – the somewhat misnamed stream of consciousness, above all else – which she perfected to a fine pitch in later works such as To the Lighthouse and The Waves, is largely absent here. Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path.'įor further information, including links to M4B audio book, online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audiobooks, or to become a volunteer reader, please visit librivox.As you’d expect from a first novel, The Voyage Out, in terms of its form, style, and structure, is markedly less modernist than Woolf’s later works: it is generally accepted that her third novel Jacob’s Room (1922) represented the turning point in her novel-writing career. a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis.

The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth and published in the U.S. Librivox recording of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf.