Night and day

A landmark republication of a timely, overlooked social novel from Virginia Woolf set amidst the struggle for women's suffrage, re-introduced for Restless Classics by bestselling author of Fates and Furies Lauren Groff and illustrated by graphic artist Kristen Radtke.

When she published her second novel, Night and Day, in 1919, Virginia Woolf was excoriated for writing a seemingly traditional novel, one that ignored Britains entrance into modernity and the horrors of World War I. What about it provoked such a reaction, to the point where it goes unrecognized even today?

On its surface, Night and Day reads like a Shakespearean comedy: We follow the romantic endeavors of two friends, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet, as love is confessed and rebuffed, weddings planned and cancelled, until we finally arrive at two engagements. But these dramas play out against the women's movement for voting rights and equal wages, and just as Woolf makes use of the tropes of romantic comedy, she pushes back against them with an undercurrent of doubt about the institution of marriage and the civic imbalance between the sexes.

The Virginia Woolf of Night and Day is every bit as brilliant, funny, sharp, and imbued with a deep love of language as in her celebrated works Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. What makes Night and Day so remarkable is its devotion to ';real life.' In Woolfs vision, there are no happy endings, nor sad onesonly a ';dark tide of waters, endlessly moving.'