The Waves holograph draft

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

The Waves holograph draft

July 2, 1929–February 7, 1931

Published in 1931 with an evocative dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell, The Waves was one of Woolf’s best received works. It sold more than ten thousand copies in the first six months and was called a “masterpiece” by friends and critics (though the same critics thought it too experimental to be popular with readers). Indeed, it would be Woolf’s most experimental novel-length work of fiction. When she began to draft the work in 1927, she reconsidered form again, settling on the term “play-poem” for the book. Told from the interior shifting perspectives of six characters, the narrative would be “some continuous stream, not solely of human thought . . . all flowing together.” Woolf planned to tell the story over the course of a year, as referenced in the list of seasons on the left-hand page.