Virginia Woolf · 1915 · sea

Woolf's first novel, written over seven years and several breakdowns. A twenty-four-year-old sails for South America on her father's ship with an assortment of English passengers, discovers politics, sex, music and books in the space of one voyage - and Clarissa Dalloway appears aboard, nine years before she got a book of her own.

1. 1
   London

   Helen and Ridley Ambrose walk down through the City to the Thames and are rowed out to the Euphrosyne, anchored under Tower Bridge - and Helen weeps in the boat, putting water between herself and her children.

2. 2
   Lisbon

   Willoughby puts in on business and the Dalloways come aboard - Richard a Member of Parliament, Clarissa nine years before Woolf gave her a novel of her own, which is what everybody remembers about this book.

3. 3
   North Africa

   The Dalloways are set down almost parenthetically, after Richard has kissed Rachel during a storm and left her frightened by something she has no words for - and the novel changes register the moment they are gone.

4. 4
   Santa Marina

   An invented South American resort near the mouth of a great river, and an English colony at a hotel - where Rachel meets Terence Hewet, who wants to write a novel about silence, and becomes engaged to him.

5. 5
   The river

   An expedition upstream into the forest, which is where the engagement happens and where Rachel takes the fever - and Woolf ends her first novel by killing the girl she spent four hundred pages bringing to life.