The Voyage Out

A young woman learns about life, and love found and lost, in this thought-provoking debut novel by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and prolific writers-with an introduction by Elisa Gabbert, author ofThe Unreality of Memory

Absolutely unafraid … Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely asWuthering Heights,though by a different path. -E. M. Forster

London, 1905- Twenty-four-year-old Rachel Vinrace is a free spirited but painfully naive young woman when she embarks on a sea voyage with her family to South America. Arriving in Santa Marina, a town on the South American coast, Rachel and her aunt Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, who is drawn to Rachel’s unusual mind. The two fall in love, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead.

With hints of Jane Austen,The Voyage Outis a softer and more traditional novel than Virginia Woolf’s later work, even as its poetic style and innovative technique-with detailed portraits of characters’ inner lives and mesmeric shifts between the quotidian and the profound-bear the hallmark of Woolf’s fiction.

The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.