'She had the 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' Clarissa Dalloway elegant and vivacious is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Smith's day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax. Virginia Woolf's masterly novel in which she perfected the interior monologue brings past present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923. Edited by Stella McNichol With an introduction and notes by Elaine Showalter