Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories

By Virginia Woolf

A haunted house -- A society -- Monday or Tuesday -- An unwritten novel -- The string quartet -- Blue & green -- Kew Gardens -- The mark on the wall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Mar 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609774943

Virginia Woolf

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

Reviews for Monday or Tuesday

[wanderlustlover_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have, admittedly, still a little bit of an undeniable adoration of Woolf's stream of consciousness (which was gained in an Upper Grad course focused solely on her and her major works). I loved the second story in this collection best.

And I can't wait to work into a few of my next collections I picked up of

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

More so than the novels, Virginia Woolf's short stories are difficult to read. One reason for that, is that in the stories, particularly in this early collection titled Monday or Tuesday she was looking for a new form. Her writings take the form of an experiment. Another reason is that Woolf's view of the world is idiosyncratic. This makes that her writing has a very particular feel to it; Woolf's style is not easy to follow. A moment of inattention, and the reader may be lost, having to retrace steps and reread to catch the thread. Finally, in her work Woolf makes many references to people and events of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century; without knowing what she refers too, even in fiction, the stories are difficult to understand, or it is hard to see the significance. For example, in the story "A society" there is a reference to a publication in 1920 by the Edwardian author Arnold Bennett, who posed that women were intellectually inferior to men. However, the reference in the story is very vague, and it requires an annotated edition (such as the Selected short stories) or quite some research in the library to pick up such allusions.A short story collection such as Monday or Tuesday might be difficult to start reading Virginia Woolf, but for people who have already read some of the later novels, the collection is very rewarding. The collection is very typically Woolf, including all features of her style and themes.Highly recommended, but difficult to read, and therefore I would suggest to read an annotated edition such as in the Penguin Classics series, rather than a free download. An additional advantage is that the Penguin Classics edition reprints the woodcut illustrations by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.