The Things That Matter

"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.