Books by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf writes so lyrically that her intelligent, experimental style translates beautifully into audiobooks.

I focus on Woolf’s audiobooks because I find some writers are best experienced through the spoken word, and Woolf is one of them. Haruki Murakami is another writer I feel is best experienced through audiobooks. Many people would likely disagree, or question whether one format is better than the other, but I don’t think anyone would dispute that Virginia Woolf’s writing translates incredibly well to audio.

The key element in an audiobook is the narrator, and Juliet Stevenson is one of my favorites. With her lilting British accent, she captures Woolf’s flowing style and transforms any prose into something radiant. I particularly love her narration of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, one of my favorite books.

Mrs. Dalloway follows one day in Clarissa Dalloway’s life as she plans a party, while her mind reminisces about the past and muses on her life and existence.

Interestingly, Mrs. Dalloway is a favorite of Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Vendela Vida. Read more about Mrs. Dalloway in this New Yorker piece.

Another of my favorite Virginia Woolf books is the brilliant essay A Room of One’s Own, which brims with intellect as Woolf explores women, writing, and sexism in her generation.

My favorite part of A Room of One’s Own is the section where Woolf argues that the best mind is an androgynous mind. She writes: “In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female… The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.”

I often think of this when I’m reading, wondering whether particular writers have an androgynous mind. Woolf certainly had one. This is a benchmark essay for women and feminists, but also for anyone with an androgynous mind.

A Room of One’s Own is also narrated by Juliet Stevenson.

Orlando and To the Lighthouse are two of her most popular novels as well, but Woolf wrote many other interesting, well-written novels and nonfiction books that made her one of the most important 20th-century writers.

Books by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf The Waves

See on AudioBooks (3 free books). Barnes & Noble, or Amazon/Audible.

Audiobooks by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Orlando

Mrs. Dalloway
A Writer’s Diary
The Waves
To the Lighthouse
A Room of One’s Own
Orlando
The Virginia Woolf BBC Radio Drama Collection Audiobook By Virginia Woolf
The Years
Night and Day
Moments of Being
The Common Reader Volume 1
The Common Reader: Volume 2
The Voyage Out
Flush
Jacob’s Room
Virginia Woolf – The Short Stories
Between the Acts

Virginita Woolf Biographies, Letters and Diaries

Virginia Woolf A Writer's Diary

A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909
The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol. One, 1888-1912
The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Two, 1912-1922
The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One: 1915-1919
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three: 1925-1930
The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Four, 1929-1931
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four: 1931-1935
The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. Five: 1932-1935
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Five: 1936-1941
Virginia Woolf: A Life From Beginning to End by Mike Nelson
Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Diary

Quotes by Virginia Woolf

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
“Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.”
“Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
“Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”
“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s night.”
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
“I have lost friends, some by death…others by sheer inability to cross the street.”
“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.”
“I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.”
“It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.”
“They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort.”
“To love makes one solitary.”
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
“Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.”
“I am not one and simple, but complex and many.”
“There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

Find books by Virginia Woolf on Audiobooks, Amazon/Audible, and Bookstores who are not Amazon.

We hope you enjoyed learning more about books by Virginia Woolf. You’ll love Virginia Woolf’s Favorite Books Behind Her Brilliance. You might also like books by Rebecca Solnit.

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Joseph Raffetto

Joseph Raffetto earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from San Diego State University. He can be found online @noovella on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. His books are available on all online booksellers.