To the Lighthouse holograph draft
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
To the Lighthouse holograph draft
August 6, 1925–March 16, 1927
Six months before she began drafting To the Lighthouse, Woolf outlined the concept: it would “have fathers character done complete in it; & mothers; & St. Ives;& childhood; & all the usual things I try to put in— life, death, & c.” Her father, sitting in a boat, would be at the center, reciting “We perish, each alone.” This page corresponds to chapter eight in the second section, “Time Passes.” The reader has just learned, a few pages earlier, of Mrs. Ramsay’s death.
Woolf began work in earnest in January 1926 and drafted the novel more swiftly (“perhaps 3 times the speed”) than any before. She wrote “very loosely at first,” as seen here in this quickly drafted page that breaks off mid-sentence.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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