The Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Outtogether with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-w... read full description
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Jan 24, 2009
Rachel
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"The Voyage Out" is Virginia Woolf's first novel, and a preliminary foray into the world of modernist, "stream-of-consciousness" fiction. I have to say, it's not my favorite attempt. Several months trapped between the thoughts of several characters can get a little pedantic.
I found that I liked the characters more at the end than the beginning, though. One nice thing about having a thoughts-centric story is that you really get to know everyone and their relatio More...
I found that I liked the characters more at the end than the beginning, though. One nice thing about having a thoughts-centric story is that you really get to know everyone and their relatio More...
Mar 05, 2010
John
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Never having read anything by Woolf before, yet acknowledging her place in the literary world I somehow expected more from this classic. This is the story of Rachel, a 24 year old motherless adult-age but naive child who sets off on a transatlantic voyage with her father who owns the boat. The destination is a fictitious south american English colony and the work is set roughly around the turn of the 20th century. The book can roughly be divided into two main parts, the first the voyage and
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Oct 16, 2011
Kristin
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Here's another one. This is Virginia Woolf still finding her voice as a writer. Certainly if she had written like this throughout her career she would have been remembered, but probably not celebrated as a genius. This story still has some of the hallmarks of her famous writing - focus on characters' perceptions, use of setting as a symbol for the characters' journeys, lyrical writing and even irony. This story began calmly and slowly and then came to a pretty sincere climax. The personal voyage
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Sep 18, 2011
Lauryn
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There are some writers whose famous lives can intimidate readers. For a long time, Virginia Woolf has been one of those writers to me. Perhaps this stems from the extensive examination and discussion in class when we read The Hours. There is a reason for the reverence but, as usual, no reason to have been intimidated. Woolf examines interpersonal relationships with great depth while establishing a rapport with the reader that progresses from formal to familiar and comfortable, not at all the dau
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Mar 12, 2010
El
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Freaking fantastic.
Rachel Vinrace is a naive and vulnerable 24-year-old young woman on a sea voyage from London to a South American resort with her aunt and uncle. Having been sheltered the first 24 years of her life, Rachel is exceptionally shy and startled when meeting new people on the ship, particularly when they show genuine interest in her as a person and as an intellectual. The relationships she forms with these people affect her greatly, and she even falls in love. This is More...
Rachel Vinrace is a naive and vulnerable 24-year-old young woman on a sea voyage from London to a South American resort with her aunt and uncle. Having been sheltered the first 24 years of her life, Rachel is exceptionally shy and startled when meeting new people on the ship, particularly when they show genuine interest in her as a person and as an intellectual. The relationships she forms with these people affect her greatly, and she even falls in love. This is More...
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Oct 20, 2009
Patricia
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another great kindle buy - _early works of virginia woolf_ for a buck! this edition includes _jacob's room_, _monday or tuesday_, _night and day_, and _the voyage out_.
_the voyage out_, published in 1915, is her first novel. woolf was 33 when the book was published.
often compared with emily bronte's _wuthering heights_, _the voyage out_ is a socio-economic study of a young woman and the book's heroine, rachel, defining her own place in society arguably as a protofeminis More...
_the voyage out_, published in 1915, is her first novel. woolf was 33 when the book was published.
often compared with emily bronte's _wuthering heights_, _the voyage out_ is a socio-economic study of a young woman and the book's heroine, rachel, defining her own place in society arguably as a protofeminis More...
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Aug 15, 2011
Janice
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Reading Woolf after several Dickens novels causes some culture shock. For all his sometimes-maudlin sentimentality, Dickens knows how to drive a plot along. Woolf is more concerned with the interior lives of her characters, and writes more realistically in terms of plot. In other words, not much happens. Given her obvious admiration for Austen, it isn't surprising that this novel reminds me of Austen's works, including a sense claustrophobia they share, induced by social restrictions and convent
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Nov 04, 2009
Lindsay
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There is this part at the beginning of The Crying of Lot 49 when Oedipa Mass looks at a beautiful painting that makes her cry:
"For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to More...
"For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to More...
Aug 03, 2009
Chelsey
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I love Woolf. To the Lighthouse is probably one of my favorite books ever. The Voyage out is not quite what I was expecting. It’s written in a narrative-style reminiscent of the typical novel of the period, and not quite what I had grown to expect from Woolf. The prose was fantastic, and she manages to capture little ideas and emotions that are generally not dealt with in books. For instance, at one point the main character feels irritated with the actions of all of those around her, merely beca
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Jun 03, 2011
Brigitte
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What I love about Virginia Woolf is that there's always a hint of madness in her prose. The way the sentences bend and weave, ending in dark little corners, the likes of which most of us have never seen. THE VOYAGE OUT is not quite that Virginia Woolf, or maybe more accurately, it is not YET that Virginia Woolf. It is however a first novel in all that means. The plot isn't sure of itself. The tone wavers. The characters don't quite know where to go. But the seeds of her brilliance are there, lit
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Feb 17, 2011
Rowena
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Rachel Vinrace has spent her 24 years of life raised by two maiden aunts, surrounded by books and music. Upon the advent of a journey to South America, she is on the cusp of change. Her aunt Helen takes it upon herself to teach Rachel more bout the circumstances of life, in particular, about men and women, of which Rachel knows zilch. (This is the early 20th century, after all.)
I had never read Virgnia Woolf, though I had learned and read about her (see: The Hours). The first half of More...
I had never read Virgnia Woolf, though I had learned and read about her (see: The Hours). The first half of More...
Jun 21, 2009
Heather
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Virginia Woolf's first book and the first of her works that I read. My determination to read Woolf was probably the one thing that got me through the stagnant parts of the novel. You can see Woolf's stream-of-consciousness style developing here, but it's certainly not at it's peak. Still some beautiful construction of character's, such as Mrs Ambrose, who was the most fleshed out and actualized person in the novel. Also lovely was the episode with Richard and Clarissa Dalloway, the glamorous cou
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Jul 20, 2009
Gail
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This was Virginia Woolf's first novel which was published in 1919. It is a coming of age story about Rachel Vince who sails aboard her fathers ship bound for South America with a group of interesting characters that Woolf introduces us to, including a brief appearance by the Dalloways (which she devotes an entire book to later in her writings).
Rachel has led a quite sheltered life but has the opportunity to spend time in South American in "English Society" with her Aunt Helen. More...
Rachel has led a quite sheltered life but has the opportunity to spend time in South American in "English Society" with her Aunt Helen. More...
Feb 04, 2009
Martha
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Was it worth it to put together an earlier version? How much racier and political could it be than the published edition? I appreciate the respect for Woolf that went into the huge amount of work necessary to pull it off, but the very difficulty involved also implicates how much the product probably diverges from anything Woolf would've approved.
Nothing hangs together, but flashes struck me, particularly the contrast between intellectual and practical in the first half and the contra More...
Nothing hangs together, but flashes struck me, particularly the contrast between intellectual and practical in the first half and the contra More...
Sep 08, 2011
Jonathan
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I suppose it's unfair to judge an author's earlier works in the light of the later, but 'The Voyage Out' didn't have for me the concise impact of some of her other novels. There are lovely passages of insight and poetry, but it's a long haul. Rachel's voyage out of her almost autistically self-satisfying life with her aunts in Richmond, to South America, is both outer and inner, as encountering her fellow passengers, especially the two young men Hewet and Hirst, leads her to reflection and reali
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Oct 28, 2011
Bethany
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This is Woolf's first novel, and I picked it up as part of the "women writers" mood I was in immediately following my surgery. Of course due to its length, its difficulty, and my schedule, it took me twice as long to read The Voyage Out as it did to read Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Agnes Grey, and My Antonia combined. I enjoyed it because I enjoy Woolf - even the most boring plots with the most endless passages and the most elusive meanings will keep me transfixed with her
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Jan 01, 2012
Kristen
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This may well be a five star novel, but for now I’ll stick with four being this is her first novel I'm supremely confident it only gets better (and based on the short stories I've read, my only exposure to *Woolf, I'm sure this is true.) I think Virginia Woolf could be my new Nabokov. So, why does everyone want to keep us apart? First Blake, and then the people at Dover Publishing with their miniscule font and nonexistent line spacing and then those free ebook folks who put out a kindle version
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Jan 20, 2012
William
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Overall I found the novel on second reading to be very good. The fully developed Woolfian sense of humor is here. In the early going the book doesn't seem at all inferior to later more experimental works. Though those later works are leaner, more engaged with how to represent cognition in a text. In the later works, too, there is a somewhat greater ability to condense events to the numinous moment. That's here, too, but I think such moments get a little lost in the somewhat larger, more expansiv
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Jan 14, 2011
Marts (Thinker)
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Published in 1915, this is Virginia Woolf’s first novel. It tells the story of 24 year old Rachael Vinrace who embarks her father’s ship for a South American voyage. It also highlights a personal voyage for Rachael where she leaves the sheltered London suburban life and steps into a new world in which freedom, self discovery, and interaction are pivotal…
The general path of the novel is one of discovery, to experience, to tragedy…
The character Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist More...
The general path of the novel is one of discovery, to experience, to tragedy…
The character Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist More...
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Jun 12, 2010
Julie
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Woolf herself wrote that "the second-rate works of a great writer are worth reading because they offer the best criticism of his masterpieces" -- definitely true here. This isn't her best novel, but it's her first novel, and you can see so many things developing that you are going to love when they are grown.
That said, this is NOT the novel to fall in love with Woolf with. The end moves quickly -- the last 100 pages for me turned far faster than any 30 of the previous hundr More...
That said, this is NOT the novel to fall in love with Woolf with. The end moves quickly -- the last 100 pages for me turned far faster than any 30 of the previous hundr More...
Aug 16, 2010
I read this book not for school, but at the reccomendation of my English teacher for the first Virginia Woolf novel after reading the essays "A Room of One's Own", with an invitation to discuss it with her and to have the resource of her parents who had studied Virginia Woolf extensivly. I read a library copy, and then bought my own copy and read it again, marking up the book as I did so. This technique, called "active reading" is a requirement for all of the texts and handou
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Apr 10, 2011
Danielle
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***SPOILER ALERT*****
The Voyage out is one of Woolf's earlier novels and lacks the craft of her later masterpieces. The title gives the overarching theme, which runs through the book on multiple levels. First, it is the story of a few families embarking on a voyage by boat from London to Spain for holiday; then it is the story of Rachel, a young and sheltered girl, going to stay with her aunt on an extended holiday to experience more of the world; then it is the story of her falling in lo More...
The Voyage out is one of Woolf's earlier novels and lacks the craft of her later masterpieces. The title gives the overarching theme, which runs through the book on multiple levels. First, it is the story of a few families embarking on a voyage by boat from London to Spain for holiday; then it is the story of Rachel, a young and sheltered girl, going to stay with her aunt on an extended holiday to experience more of the world; then it is the story of her falling in lo More...
Aug 15, 2009
Max
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Okay, so Virginia Woolf's first novel really is pretty delightful, even if it's not as stylistically avant-garde as fans of Orlando, Lighthouse, Dalloway, Waves etc. would perhaps hope for. It's just as incisive though, as Woolf spends the vast majority of her 375 pages inside her characters' heads. There's very little plot, really, as sheltered youthful heroine Rachel Vinrace leaves her father's care to vacation in South America with her aunt. It's beautifully ironic, really, the setting; ty
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Nov 30, 2007
Evan
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An impressive first novel that took 9 years to write. (Sound familiar?) A voyage out from England to some South American port where the novel's miscellany are all vacationing. And a voyage out of a highly cloistered youth for the 24-year-old heroine. Interesting to reflect on how much this is NOT Jane Austen. The difference is that Woolf is suffused with the hope and promise of the early twentieth century to move beyond all the social bonds and injustices of the 19th, coupled with a tragic
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Jun 18, 2007
Sarah
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Jane Austen meets Joseph Conrad... kind of weird, but an interesting entrance into her later work. This novel covers a lot of interesting gender and post-colonial issues; the heroine discovers herself in a Jane Austen kind of way -- dances, tea parties, and other expeditions with the English upper-crust -- but her primary instructor in her feminine role is a woman who doesn't necessarily embody typical feminine ideals. This woman works on tapestries while reading philosophy, and speaks openly an
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Sep 19, 2011
Francis
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Awkward relationships slowly develop among a small group of English people vacationing in South America. The relationships seemed almost contrived or forced. it was hard to see how these people appealed to each other. The men were affected and wooden, quasi intellectuals without heart or soul. The woman seemed a little smarter, tougher but resigned to defeat.
I found it somewhat dull and listless at first but by the end I was caught up in the story. My opinion? A great writer, but n More...
I found it somewhat dull and listless at first but by the end I was caught up in the story. My opinion? A great writer, but n More...
Apr 14, 2011
Sonia
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This was Woolf's first novel, and the first Woolf novel I've read. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was not the best book I've read. She is known to be one of the prominent modernist writers, whatever that means. We are moved through the book mostly via the characters' thoughts and I found most of the first two thirds of the book tedious. I had read the introduction and knew to expect a tragedy, so their trip up the river got my interest up. The ending was far better than the beg
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Dec 25, 2010
Faith
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Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors - her brilliancy amazes me. I found this book intriguing, as it is the first one she published, and shows her style before it fully morphed into the modernist stream-of-consciousness she is known for. Instead, she here mixes stream-of-consciousness with regular narrative style, for a very interesting effect.
The plot itself is very expressive and paints a tranquil picture. It was quite depressing, although Woolf has never been known for her happy More...
The plot itself is very expressive and paints a tranquil picture. It was quite depressing, although Woolf has never been known for her happy More...
Oct 02, 2011
Grace
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I probably didn't do the book much justice by reading it in the space of a few months, and stopping halfway through to read something else. The characters and names were very confusing, but that's obviously my own fault, and not a critique of the book. I didn't see the end coming at all. Most importantly, I did live the writing. It was descriptive and effective and creative. But I'll probably have to read it again sometime in a more dedicated way.
Nov 28, 2011
Shelly
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Hmmmmm... This was my first Virginia Woolf book, and I can't figure out how I feel about it.
I couldn't wait to finish it, but maybe because I was in a hurry to get it over with.
The early and middle parts of the book that caught my interest (the introduction to Helen and Ridley, Rachel's time with the Dalloways) were so little.
I'm going to need to read it again.
I couldn't wait to finish it, but maybe because I was in a hurry to get it over with.
The early and middle parts of the book that caught my interest (the introduction to Helen and Ridley, Rachel's time with the Dalloways) were so little.
I'm going to need to read it again.
