Back in September, we gathered at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn to celebrate the 100th anniversary edition of Virginia Woolf’s overlooked second novel Night and Day. Three fans of Virginia Woolf—Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Michael Cunningham, professor of English Anne E. Fernald, and writer and lecturer Julie Orringer—give Night and Day its due as a rich emotional portrait of two women on the verge, which passes the Bechdel test with flying colors:
“It seems utterly novel for someone to repudiate love to this degree…. Of course there are broken engagements in literature, of course there are loveless marriages, but there’s never the kind of questioning of the value of love or the necessity for love in a woman’s life in quite this way, and it’s like being doused in ice water…. I just kept imagining what it would have felt like to readers in 1919.”
—Julie Orringer on Night and Day
Their wide-ranging discussion covers Woolf’s beef with Katherine Mansfield, whether characters need to be likeable, and the extraordinary context from which Night and Day emerged (the publisher, for example, was her half-brother and abuser). Watch the full conversation here, and learn more about the book below.
About the Book
by Virginia Woolf
Introduction by Lauren Groff
Illustrations by Kristen Radtke
Restless Classics
The 100th Anniversary Edition of Virginia Woolf’s timely, overlooked second novel—a remarkable story of two women navigating the possibilities opened up by the struggle for women’s suffrage—introduced for Restless Classics by bestselling author of Fates and Furies Lauren Groff and illustrated by graphic artist Kristen Radtke.
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632060327
Publication date: Jul 9, 2019