The annotated, authorized edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century with commentary by leading Virginia Woolf scholar Mark Hussey. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and conflict between men and women. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. Told through Woolf's pioneering stream of consciousness technique, there’s the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. With the lighthouse excursion postponed, Woolf shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever. But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph―the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, this work of philosophical fiction also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other. This authorized edition from the Virginia Woolf library features: Biographical Preface - Chronology - Introduction to the text - Extensive notes - Suggestions for further reading This annotated edition is the perfect companion to more fully understand To the Lighthouse , its importance in twentieth century literature, and the world of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.  “I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It’s so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it’s alive.”  - Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home “A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again.”  - Greta Gerwig, director of Lady Bird and Little Women “ To the Lighthouse  is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time.”  - Margaret Drabble, author of The Witch of Exmoor “Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. If you’re like me you’ll come back to this book often, always astounded, always moved, always refreshed.” - Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm “Radiant as [ To the Lighthouse ] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.” - Eudora Welty VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando. "YES, OF COURSE, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added. To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling- all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs. "But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, "it won't be fine." Had there been an axe handy, or a poker, any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children's brea