She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered …

-Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

An illuminating exploration of how seven of the greatest English novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Between the Acts-portray the essential experiences of life.

Edward Mendelson-a professor of English at Columbia University-illustrates how each novel is a living portrait of the human condition while expressing its author’s complex individuality and intentions and emerging from the author’s life and times. He explores Frankenstein as a searing representation of child neglect and abandonment and Mrs. Dalloway as a portrait of an ideal but almost impossible adult love, and leads us to a fresh and fascinating new understanding of each of the seven novels, reminding us-in the most captivating way-why they matter.