Janet Winston has given us a wonderful, and expansive, introduction cum companion to Woolf's great modernist novel. She launches the reader on a fascinating and intellectually exhilarating voyage to and around Woolf's lighthouse, guiding us with wit, intelligence and elan through the notoriously difficult waters of the text's biographical and historical contexts, pointing out key works in the daunting and diverse body of scholarship and criticism it has generated, and offering generous and insightful ways we might begin to read its experimental narrative style. Winston gives helpful guidance in both the broad sweep and design as well as the fine detail of the writing, illuminating a selection of significant passages, and encouraging us to venture further with our own responses. She introduces too a broad sample of other works of art inspired by To the Lighthouse, including drama, film and painting. - Dr Jane Goldman, Reader in English Literature, University of Glasgow, UK
Janet Winston's engaging and lively book offers a comprehensive introduction to one of Virginia Woolf's most fascinating novels. Winston offers surprising and provocative insights into Woolf's life, experimental style, and fictional characters, including a fascinating discussion of the cultural after-life of Woolf's novel. Whether you are a newcomer to Woolf's work, or an old-timer, you will find something to interest you in these pages. - Professor Suzanne Raitt, Department of English, College of William & Mary, USA
Janet Winston's highly accessible and wide-ranging Reader's Guide to one of the most important texts in Western literature - Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse - provides a timely companion for all readers of this lyrical novel, though it is designed primarily for undergraduate students. Readers who may be coming to Woolf for the first time will be glad for the many important ways that this guide contextualizes To the Lighthouse with Woolf's other writings, fiction and non-fiction. A noted Woolf scholar whose research into the Victorian world and its shaping of gender and politics has merited high praise from her academic peers, Professor Winston draws on her own initial experiences reading the novel and teaching it to undergraduates on many occasions. She carefully maps out the historical, intellectual and personal contexts layered into Woolf's fourth novel, helping readers make sense of the crucial familial background as well as the importance of new aesthetic ideas emerging within the Bloomsbury Group and elsewhere. Winston assists readers through the experimental language, style and form of the novel, offering strategies for navigating Woolf's intricate structuring of the narrative and building on the contexts explored in Chapter 1. Anticipating readers' questions about the deceptively simple plotting of the novel, Winston offers meaningful critical explorations of key issues presented by the text. Discussion questions embedded into the text are valuable for classroom teachers as well as students, as they help readers draw connections among various aspects of the plot, literary devices utilized by Woolf, and the ways in which historical forces such as imperialism and war enter the novel. In a fourth chapter, Winston summarizes the critical reception of To the Lighthouse, including a substantive discussion of how the politics of gender continue to mark readings of this novel and Woolf's writing generally. Even the most sophisticated readers will be enriched by the extensive critical history Winston makes available in Chapters 4 and 5. All readers, particularly students interested in visual art and theater, will benefit from the engaging discussion of how Woolf's novel has inspired adaptations by contemporary painters, artists, filmmakers and stage directors. An up-to-the-minute concluding chapter indicates further resources for reading, teaching and thinking about Woolf and this novel in particular, guaranteeing the usefulness of the guide for readers at all levels. I'm looking forward to assigning Winston's companion guide the next time I have the opportunity to teach this novel!- Jeanette McVicker, Professor of English, State University of New York at Fredonia, USA
The book is at a highly professional level with inetresting points and conclusions. ... The advantage of the information presented is not only that it makes you more aware of the story, its characters and Woolf's use of language but that it also gives you a broader view of her other works. You are left with insights and knowledge which will surely enhance your reading experience. Virginia Woolf Bulletin. May 2010
'In all, it is a very stimulating book which should encourage both the new reader and the reader who has been puzzled by some of the difficulties.' -- The Use of English
