Never Won a Major Prize
Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Summary
Clarissa Dalloway prepares for a party across a single June day in London while the shell shocked veteran Septimus Smith spirals toward tragedy. Woolf threads their inner lives together through the city streets, striking clocks, and chance encounters. The novel remade what fiction could do with time, memory, and consciousness.
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Historical Context & Significance
No major prize recognised the novel in 1925, a year when the Pulitzer went to Edna Ferber for So Big. Woolf never won a major literary award, yet Mrs Dalloway now anchors the modernist canon.