Title: THE YEARS.
Publisher: The Hogarth Press, Tavistock Square, London.
Publication Date: 1937
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
FIRST EDITION. 469 printed pages [470-472 blank]. Very slight offsetting on free endpapers. Text block slightly toned. 13 x 19 cm. Original pale jade-green cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine (very lightly toned, very slight rubbing to the spine ends). Complete with unrepaired cream dust jacket printed in black and brown, designed by Vanessa Bell. Mild chipping to head and tail of spine, and to top and bottom of the hinges; one or two 3-5 mm pieces at head of spine, virtually detached; spine panel a trifle darkened. About twelve small dark foxing spots on each of the upper and lower panels. Book and dust jacket in very good to near fine condition. 18,142 copies were published on 15th March 1937 at 8s.6d. The Years is the last novel by Virginia Woolf published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s. The novel had its inception in a lecture Woolf gave to the National Society for Women's Service on January 21, 1931, an edited version of which would later be published as "Professions for Women". Having recently published A Room of One's Own, Woolf thought of making this lecture the basis of a new book-length essay on women, this time taking a broader view of their economic and social life, rather than focusing on women as artists, as the first book had. As she was working on correcting the proofs of The Waves and beginning the essays for The Common Reader, Second Series, the idea for this essay took shape in a diary entry for 16 February 1932: "And I'm quivering & itching to write my--whats it to be called?--'Men are like that?'--no thats too patently feminist: the sequel then, for which I have collected enough powder to blow up St Pauls. It is to have 4 pictures" (capitalization and punctuation as in manuscript). The reference to "4 pictures" in this diary entry shows the early connection between The Years and Three Guineas, which would, indeed, include photographs. On 11 October 1932, she titled the manuscript "THE PARGITERS: An Essay based upon a paper read to the London/National Society for Women's Service". Kirkpatrick A22a. Seller Inventory # 5213