The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye,
that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening.' To the Lighthouse is at
once a vivid impressionistic depiction of a family holiday, and a
meditation on marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and
bitterness. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their
holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever;
but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will
be fatally challenged. With a psychologically introspective mode, the use
of memory, reminiscence and shifting perspectives gives the novel an
intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it
represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.
The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the
best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the
Second World War.