Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882, in London, England, stands as a central figure in modernist literature. Her literary career is marked by an experimental approach to narrative structure and a deep psychological insight into her characters. Woolf's legacy is often associated with her adept use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, which she employed to explore the inner lives of her characters and the social issues of her time. Her 1925 novel 'Mrs. Dalloway' is a quintessential example of this technique, offering a vivid portrait of Clarissa Dalloway, a high-society woman in post-World War I England, as she prepares for a party. This novel, like much of Woolf's work, interrogates themes of mental illness, feminism, and the passage of time. Other notable works by Woolf include 'To the Lighthouse' (1927) and 'Orlando' (1928), which further broadcast her influence on both feminist literature and the modernist canon. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which helped shape her intellectual milieu. Tragically, Woolf's life was marred by mental illness, and she died by suicide on March 28, 1941. Her literature, however, continues to resonate, making her one of the most studied and celebrated authors of the 20th century.