fffriday | The Annotated Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf with foreword and annotations by Merve Emre

Perhaps a slightly strange entry for this comm, but I imagine there's crossover interest.

This is a new(ish) hardback annotated + illustrated edition of Mrs Dalloway from Norton, with contextual annotations and critical foreword added by literary scholar Merve Emre, but aimed at a non-scholarly audience. Everyone should obviously read Mrs Dalloway, but this is a review of the annotated edition, rather than the novel per se.

I had bought this annotated edition as a gift for a family member, but I went ahead and read it before I wrapped it up. The verdict: okay! Probably quite satisfying for non-academics. I personally thought the balance was off between footnotes I welcomed which explained particular political/historical happenings relevant to the text, gestured towards interesting academic readings, and compared draft histories and the development of specific passages, and footnotes which, literally, explained over the course of two full page-margins what Big Ben is. I'm just pretty sure people reading a $35 USD hardback annotated Mrs Dalloway on purpose are going to know what Big Ben is, and I would rather know more about what changes were made to the character of Rezia. However! There were annotations of the nature I preferred, and I definitely learned some interesting things, including scholars whose work I would like to look at more closely. I do also want to give Emre significant credit for not toeing the Hermione Lee party line and giving sexual assault and abuse their rightful place in these annotations, both as an element of the novel and as an element of Woolf's personal history.

This edition is also a beautiful book-object, full of lovely illustrations and photographs. I thought the paper stock was a good thickness and the cover was pretty. Definitely a great gift book for the right person.