Mrs Dalloway: a bedtime book you can walk across London

This book is about a single day. A June morning in London, the society hostess Clarissa Dalloway goes out to buy the flowers for her evening party — and in those few hours a whole life passes before us: hers, and that of a stranger to her, the shell-shocked soldier Septimus. Mrs Dalloway is read not for its plot but for the way Virginia Woolf hears a person’s thoughts — a stream in which past and present flow into each other. A good bedtime book for those who like slow reading, and also a guide to London: the whole novel can be walked.

An extract

The famous first line:

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“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

And through the whole novel runs the striking of Big Ben, each stroke followed by the same phrase: “The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925). The text is in the public domain. The full English text is free on Project Gutenberg (link below).

Why it is worth reading tonight

It is one of the books with which the modern novel began: instead of outward events, inner speech overheard from within. If you love it when language matters more than plot, Woolf is your author. If not, we’ll say it plainly: it reads slowly and needs quiet — evening quiet, exactly. Start with the first pages of Clarissa’s walk through Westminster; if that rhythm carries you, the book is yours.

About the author

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was one of the major English writers of the 20th century and the centre of the Bloomsbury Group — a circle of writers and artists who lived close together in the London district of Bloomsbury. Mrs Dalloway was published in 1925 by the Hogarth Press, which Woolf founded with her husband Leonard.

Where to go

The whole novel can be walked — it is all in central London, and all free.

Westminster and St James’s. Clarissa walks from her house in Westminster through St James’s Park and Green Park towards Bond Street. Big Ben, whose striking measures out the novel, is here too. The parks are open and free.

Bloomsbury. The district where Woolf lived and worked. In Tavistock Square Gardens stands her bronze bust — the garden is free to enter. Nearby, on the houses of Gordon Square and Tavistock Square, are the blue plaques of the Bloomsbury Group.

Where to get it

Free and legal. The full English text is on Project Gutenberg. To find it in a library near you, use the Library Hub Discover catalogue. Links below.

To buy. An English edition is in every bookshop in Britain. For the Russian translation, try the Russian-language bookshops — Notre Locus (Russian and English sections). Check stock and price on the shop’s own site.