The Voyage Out - wikipedia The Voyage Out The Voyage Out Cover of the first edition of 1915. Author Virginia Woolf Country United Kingdom Language English Genre Novel Publisher Duckworth Publication date 26 March 1915 Media type Print ( hardback & paperback ) The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth ; and published in the US in 1920 by Doran. Contents 1 Development and first draft 2 Plot 3 Critical reception 4 Notes 5 External links Development and first draft Woolf began work on The Voyage Out in 1910 and had finished an early draft by 1912. The novel had a long and difficult gestation and was not published until 1915. It was written during a period in which Woolf was especially psychologically vulnerable. She suffered from periods of depression and at one point attempted suicide. The resultant work contained the seeds of all that would blossom in her later work : the innovative narrative style, the focus on feminine consciousness, sexuality and death. In 1981, Louise DeSalvo published an alternate version of The Voyage Out featuring its original title, Melymbrosia. Professor DeSalvo worked for seven years on the project of reconstructing the text of the novel as it might have appeared in 1912, before Woolf had begun serious revisions. She reviewed more than 1,000 manuscript pages from Woolf 's private papers, dating the earlier versions of the work by small organizational clues such as the color of ink used or noticing where a pen had last left off writing. DeSalvo 's Melymbrosia attempts to restore the text of the novel as Woolf had originally conceived it, which contained more candid political commentary on such issues as homosexuality, women 's suffrage, and colonialism. According to DeSalvo, Woolf was `` warned by colleagues that publishing such an outspoken indictment of Britain could prove disastrous to her fledgling career ''. The work was heavily revised until it became the novel now known as The Voyage Out, which omits much of the political candour of the original. DeSalvo 's edition was reissued by Cleis Press in 2002. Plot Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father 's ship and is launched on a course of self - discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirise Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf 's later novel, Mrs Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modelled after important figures in Woolf 's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf 's sister, Vanessa Bell. Rachel 's journey from a cloistered life in a London suburb to freedom, challenging intellectual discourse and discovery very likely reflects Woolf 's own journey from a repressive household to the intellectual stimulation of the Bloomsbury Group. Critical reception Writing in 1926, E.M. Forster described it as ``... a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis ''. Reviewing the book a decade earlier, he wrote this : `` It is absolutely unafraid... Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path. '' Literary scholar Phyllis Rose writes in her introduction to the novel, `` No later novel of Woolf 's will capture so brilliantly the excitement of youth. '' And also the excitement and challenge of life. `` It 's not cowardly to wish to live, '' says one old man at the end of the book. `` It 's the very reverse of cowardly. Personally, I 'd like to go on for a hundred years... Think of all the things that are bound to happen ! '' Notes Jump up ^ Warner, Virginia Woolf, The Waves, p. 17 Jump up ^ Briggs, Virginia Woolf : an inner life, p. 42 Jump up ^ Waller, Writers, Readers and Reputations, p. 1043 Jump up ^ James Haule ( Winter 1982 ). `` Review : Virginia Woolf ''. Contemporary Literature. 23 ( 1 ) : 100 -- 104. JSTOR 1208147. Jump up ^ Louise Desalvo, Melymbrosia, Cleis Press, 2002 Jump up ^ Louise Desalvo, Melymbrosia, Cleis Press, 2002 Jump up ^ Phyllis Rose, A Woman of Letters : A Life of Virginia Woolf, p. 58 Jump up ^ Rose, op. cit., p. 57 Jump up ^ Majumdar Virginia Woolf, p. 172 Jump up ^ Majumdar, op. cit., p. 52 - 53 Jump up ^ Phyllis Rose, Introduction to A Voyage Out, Bantam Books, 1991, p. xvi Jump up ^ cf. Forster, as quoted in Majumdar, op. cit., p. 54 Jump up ^ The Voyage Out, chapter 27 External links Wikisource has original text related to this article : The Voyage Out The Voyage Out at Project Gutenberg The Voyage Out public domain audiobook at LibriVox Virginia Woolf ( works ) Novels The Voyage Out Night and Day Jacob 's Room Mrs Dalloway To the Lighthouse Orlando : A Biography The Waves The Years Between the Acts Short stories Monday or Tuesday A Haunted House and Other Short Stories `` A Society '' `` An Unwritten Novel '' `` The String Quartet '' `` Blue & Green '' `` Kew Gardens '' `` The Mark on the Wall '' `` The New Dress '' `` The Duchess and the Jeweller '' Biographies Flush : A Biography Roger Fry : A Biography Non-fiction `` Modern Fiction '' The Common Reader A Room of One 's Own On Being Ill The London Scene The Second Common Reader Three Guineas The Death of the Moth and Other Essays The Moment and Other Essays Women and Writing Moments of Being `` A Sketch of the Past '' Related Bloomsbury Group Hogarth Press Monk 's House Dreadnought hoax The Hours ( novel, film ) From the Diary of Virginia Woolf ( song cycle ) Leonard Woolf ( husband ) Julia Stephen ( mother ) Leslie Stephen ( father ) Vanessa Bell ( sister ) Thoby Stephen ( brother ) Adrian Stephen ( brother ) GND : 4530735 - 0 BNF : cb145165416 ( data ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Voyage_Out&oldid=786619092 '' Categories : 1915 British novels Novels by Virginia Woolf Debut novels Novels set in South America Gerald Duckworth and Company books Hidden categories : EngvarB from September 2013 Use dmy dates from September 2013 Pages to import images to Wikidata Articles with Project Gutenberg links Articles with LibriVox links Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Talk Contents About Wikipedia Deutsch Español Français Italiano Português Edit links This page was last edited on 20 June 2017, at 15 : 08. 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Question: who wrote the introduction to the voyage out
Answer: Phyllis Rose