“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”
To the Lighthouse chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family and their close friends, from the tranquil and motherly Mrs. Ramsay to the tragic and eccentric Mr. Ramsay, and their eight children and varied guests. Woolf uses the three movements of the novel to capture their complex family allegiances and the tensions between men and women at the time. Centered around their visits to the Isle of Skye between 1910 and 1920, the novel is an examination of the quiet, seemingly trivial moments of everyday life. As the world changes drastically around the Ramsays, they too must come to terms with, and hopefully face head on, their capacity to change along with it.
To the Lighthouse is number fifteen on Modern Library’s list of one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century, and it was named as one of the best English-language novels since 1923 by Time magazine.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was one of the most important writers of the twentieth-century modernist tradition. She was a pioneer in the usage of stream of consciousness narrative device, and since the publication of her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915 she published a steady and remarkable stream of essays, fiction, and literary criticism throughout her life. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf and together they founded Hogarth Press in 1917. Her friendship and relationship with the writer and gardener Vita Sackville West began in 1922 and carried on until she died by suicide in 1941. Among Woolf’s best-known works are Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando.
Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.