Virginia Woolf 
To the Lighthouse 

‘To the Lighthouse’  is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf and it is considered one of her best. In 1998, the 
Modern Library named ‘To the Lighthouse’ No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.



The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.

As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph – the human capacity for change.



Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of ‘To the Lighthouse’ is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no direct action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations.