Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Margaret Drabble.

'Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain.'

So reflects the beautiful, middle-aged Mrs Ramsay, a mother of eight, as she surveys her family and guests at her dinner table, and sees their fleeting harmony, a fleeting reflection of eternity. This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on for ever. For the children, it is an earthly Paradise. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transience, she creates an enduring work of art.