Mrs Dalloway

　　
　　作者維吉尼亞．吳爾芙以清麗精巧的意識流手法，結合女性感官特有的陰柔筆觸，捕捉漫遊縹緲聲影和內心剎那的靈動，呈現出細膩繁複的吉光片羽。
　　
　　《戴洛維夫人》一書，描繪戴洛維夫人從清晨為準備舉行一場宴會而外出買花，到宴會行將結束。在這一天之中，作者以克萊麗莎自己泉湧的思緒、其他人物的思維的滑移以及全知觀點的鋪陳，讓讀者藉由被割裂的片段意象中，去重拾作者企圖表達的概念及情節。這部小說以兩個部分構成：一是時間呈現定格，讀者被引導去沉思空間中種種不同但卻是在同一時間內發生的事件，所以有時作者引導讀者站在倫敦的一條街上窺視著很多人的意識；一是空間凝結，在一個人的意識中上下移動，呈現人物一生中的各個片段。

　　*本書中譯本<<戴洛維夫人>>由高寶出版

　　She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.'

　　On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a party she is giving that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are of the past and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth, her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, his world and Clarissa's collide in unexpected ways.

作者簡介

維吉尼亞．吳爾芙（Virginia Woolf 1882~1941）

　　二十世紀重要的英國小說家、散文家，也是文學史上現代主義與女性主義的先鋒；她與倫敦文友創辦「布倫斯伯里文化圈」並在其中扮演要角，對二十世紀初期的英國文化影響極深。

　　吳爾芙出版多部長篇傑作，包括《達洛維夫人》，乃至充滿詩意與高度實驗色彩的《浪潮》。她同時也著墨於文學批評、短篇故事、傳記與報導寫作，包括充滿戲謔顛覆意味的《歐蘭朵》，《自己的房間》、《三枚金幣》則是激昂的女性主義論文。

　　吳爾芙天性敏感，少女時因母親與姐姐離世遭受精神創痛，之後長年受憂鬱症所苦，並於六十歲時投水自盡。

　　Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. With her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, she was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and her major novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928), written for Vita Sackville-West, the extraordinarily poetic vision of The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941). Woolf lived an energetic life, reviewing and writing and dividing her time between London and the Sussex Downs. In 1941, fearing another attack of mental illness, she drowned herself.