Gardens in the Work of Virginia Woolf: Nature, Modernity and the Politics of Space

This study reads Woolf’s fictional gardens in light of her development as a writer, tracing these spaces alongside elements of her personal life and her changing understanding of nature and space. In the course of this work, these locations are revealed to be emotionally and imaginatively charged, acting as vehicles for powerful sentiments and vital intellectual arguments. Through extensive examinations of texts including The Voyage Out, ‘Kew Gardens’, Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves, this book frames Woolf’s literary gardens as expressive and innovative spheres that formed part of wider early twentieth-century attempts to reimagine nature and domesticity as vibrant, even radical, facets of modern life.