The Years (Vintage Classics Woolf Series)

　　The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.
 

作者簡介

維吉妮亞．吳爾芙（Virginia Woolf，1882.01.25 ~ 1941.03.28）

　　英國女作家，被譽為二十世紀現代主義與女性主義的先鋒。兩次世界大戰期間，她是倫敦文學界的核心人物，同時也是布倫茲伯利藝文圈主要成員之一。最知名的小說包括《戴洛威夫人》、《燈塔行》、《自己的房間》、《海浪》等。

　　吳爾芙被譽為二十偉大的小說家，現代主義文學潮流的先鋒。她對英語語言革新良多，在小說中嘗試意識流的寫作方法，試圖去描繪在人們心底的潛意識。愛德華 ‧ 摩根 ‧ 福斯特稱她將英語「朝著光明的方向推進了一小步」。她在文學上的成就和創新至今仍有影響。

　　吳爾芙患有嚴重的抑鬱症，她曾在 1936 年寫給朋友的信中提及：「永不要相信我的信，不騙你，寫這信之前我徹夜未眠，瞪著一瓶 chloral，喃喃說著不能、不要，你不能飲。」1941 年 3 月 28 日，她在自己的口袋? 裝滿了石頭之後，投入了位於羅德麥爾她家附近的歐塞河自盡。

　　Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. After her father's death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of ‘The Bloomsbury Group’. This informal collective of artists and writers exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture.

　　In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.