This page contains links to searchable scanned PDF images of four early printings of Mrs. Dalloway and to PDF documents containing the texts of those editions, extracted from the scanned images. It also includes scanned images of the two sets of marked proofs of the novel. This page also includes the story "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and notes on existing editions of the novel.
This site also offers similar pages about To the Lighthouse and The Waves and other items.
The four printings of the novel that have textual authority are: the first American and first British editions, and two later impressions of the first British edition, both of the latter with revisions evidently made by Virginia Woolf. ("Textual authority" means that these printings derive directly from the work of the author.) A scanned image and text are also provided for the Introduction to the 1928 Modern Library reprint of the American edition.
See the note below for technical information about these scans.
The American edition, although published on the same day as the British edition, 14 May 1925, represents an earlier state of the text. The American text is based on proof corrections made by the author before she made her final proof corrections for the British text.
The four authoritative printings (and the 1928 Introduction) are as follows:
Another English-language edition, published in Leipzig by Bernhard Tauchnitz in 1929 for sale on the European continent, was reset without change from the first British edition. All other editions of the novel were made after the author's death in 1941 and have no independent textual authority. Some current British editions are based on reset editions published by the Hogarth Press, first in 1942, then in 1947 (first issued under the imprint of the Zodiac Press, London, but later often reprinted as a Hogarth Press publication), not on the 1925-through-1929 printings.
Virginia Woolf made two changes in the September 1925 second impression (page numbers refer to the scanned PDFs):
Virginia Woolf made seven further changes in the September 1929 third impression, for the "Uniform Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf" (page numbers refer to the scanned PDFs):
—"The third Hogarth Press impression (the "Uniform Edition") is the most accurate text, but has the following typing and compositorial errors, unchanged from the first and second impressions (page numbers refer to the scanned PDFs):
The many differences between the first American edition and the first British edition may be seen in this PDF document that displays the variants in different colors (blue and struck through for the American edition, red and underlined for the British).
Note: All references on this page to the "American edition" refer to the first American edition.
Some errors in the American edition resulted from Virginia Woolf's mistaken
or ambiguous proof-corrections. For example, "silver flashing—plumes
like" instead of the correct, British-edition reading "silver-flashing plumes
like" (American edition, p. 69). In the Harcourt proofs, Virginia Woolf mistakenly indicated that the
hyphen should be placed after "flashing" and an American editor tried to make
sense of this by using a dash instead.
Similarly, the American edition has "If they failed him, he had to support police" instead of the correct, British-edition reading "If they failed, he had to support him police" (American edition, p. 154). In both the Raverat and Harcourt proofs (and evidently in the lost Hogarth Press proofs), Virginia Woolf wrote "him" in the right-hand margin, following "to support" and did not think it necessary to add an insertion mark (caret) at the same point. The American editor, not finding an insertion mark, penciled in a caret earlier in the line. Both these errors seem never to have been corrected in any edition of the American text.
A note on copyright: All printed texts of Mrs. Dalloway are in the public domain (i.e., out of copyright) everywhere in the world. The manuscripts of the novel and Virginia Woolf's markings on the printed proofs remain in copyright in the United Kingdom (but nowhere else) though 2039.
I am grateful to Stephen Barkway, Stuart N. Clarke, and Mark Hussey for indispensable help in preparing this page.
This story, which developed into the novel, appeared in the American magazine The Dial, July 1923. A scanned image (modified from the image at Google Books) may be found here, together with a PDF of the text.
A scanned image of the corrected typescript (from the Dial archives in the Beinecke Library) may also be found here. An earlier draft typescript is in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, and may be viewed only at the Library.
Two sets of marked proofs of the novel survive, one marked for a friend, the other for the American (Harcourt) edition. A third set, marked for the printers of the Hogarth Press edition, has been lost.
The first set, less extensively marked than the second, was given by Virginia Woolf to her friend Jacques Raverat so that he could read the book before he died. It is commonly known as the "Raverat Proofs" and is in the UCLA Library Special Collections, which generously supplied the low-resolution scanned images linked here.
The second set was marked for Harcourt, Brace to use when setting the American edition in type. It is commonly known as the "Harcourt proofs" and is now in the Lilly Library, which generously supplied the scanned images linked here.
These marked proofs, like all of Virginia Woolf's manuscript and unpublished works, are protected by copyright in the United Kingdom (not elsewhere) through 2039. They are posted here by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf. The Estate further specifies: “Users of the website may make copies of the Works under general copyright exceptions, but cannot further copy, share or adapt the Works. This shall only be for non-commercial purposes and the copyright holder shall be credited.” These restrictions apply only in those places where the proofs are protected by copyright.
For further information on the Raverat and Harcourt proofs, see the editions by G. Patton Wright, Morris Beja, and Anne E. Fernald, described below. Full accounts are in Glenn P. Wright (i.e., G. Patton Wright), “The Raverat Proofs of Mrs. Dalloway,” Studies in Bibliography, 1986; and E. F. Shields’ “The American Edition of Mrs. Dalloway,” Studies in Bibliography, 1974.
After a reset edition of Mrs. Dalloway was published by the Hogarth Press in 1942, the text was again reset in 1947. The 1947 text was thoroughly repunctuated, adding around ninety commas and a few interrogation marks, and removing a few commas and other punctuation - changes that altered the prose rhythms and in some cases the meaning of the original text. The 1947 text also has typographical errors that change or omit words. However, it makes a few corrections and (probably needless) regularizations of the 1925 and 1942 texts, correcting "Kinlock" to "Kinloch" and "Wilkin" to "Wilkins", rendering Elizabeth's party dress as "pink" throughout (and not "pink" three times, "red" once), and correcting "Richard" to "Peter" in Peter's final exchange with Sally (Hogarth p. 291, Zodiac, p. 212).
This version of the text was the only one available in the UK from 1947 through 1989, and it remains in circulation, reset, in the current edition in the Oxford World's Classics series.
In 1947, a year after Chatto & Windus acquired the Hogarth Press, Chatto published its reset edition under the imprint of The Zodiac Press; this edition was reprinted under the Zodiac imprint in 1949. The same setting was reprinted, under the Hogarth Press imprint in the Uniform Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf, eight times from 1950 through 1980. Chatto also reprinted it in 1950 in its New Phoenix Library series. Penguin Books reset this version of the text for its 1964 Penguin Modern Classics edition, and reissued the 1947 setting in the Penguin Popular Classics series in 1996.
Unfortunately, all three editors of the Oxford World's Classics editions follow the 1947 text while under the misapprehension that they were based on earlier Hogarth texts. The 1992 edition mistakenly describes itself as based on "the original text" but closely follows the 1947 text. The 2000 edition mistakenly describes itself as based on the 1942 edition with emendations, but in fact it follows the 1947 text with emendations (e.g. correcting "Blaxo" to "Glaxo").The 2025 edition reports that it adopts the text of the 2000 edition, correcting it only by adding a section break that had been lost in the 1942 resetting and was therefore absent from the 1947 text.
A few examples of the many changes in the Zodiac Press edition follow:
| 1929 Uniform Edition (with page numbers) | 1947 Zodiac Press (with page numbers) |
| her dismissal from school during the War—poor embittered unfortunate creature! (20) | her dismissal from school during the War—poor, embittered, unfortunate creature! (14) |
| A small crowd meanwhile had gathered at the gates (30) | A small crowd, meanwhile, had gathered at the gates (22) |
| held it high as the car approached; and let the poor mothers (32) | held it high as the car approached and let the poor mothers (23) |
| Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up (32) | Dropping dead down, the aeroplane soared straight up (23) |
| and bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible charity and laughing goodness one shape after another (34) | and bestowing upon him, in their inexhaustible charity and laughing goodness, one shape after another (25) |
| For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, (66) | For she was a child throwing bread to the ducks, (48) |
| Oh these parties, he thought; Clarissa's parties. Why does she give these parties, he thought. (74) | Oh these parties? he thought; Clarissa's parties. Why does she give these parties? he thought. (54) |
| But what was it about, he wondered; what had (108) | But what was it about? he wondered; what had (79) |
| wherever in short the climate or the devil tempts men (151) | wherever, in short, the climate or the devil tempts men (111) |
| She did out of her meagre income set aside (190) | She did, out of her meagre income, set aside (138) |
| this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take (209) | this voice, pouring endlessly, year in, year out, would take (152) |
| Why then rage and prophesy? (215) | Why, then, rage and prophesy? (157) |
The Zodiac Press edition also makes these and other errors:
| 1929 Uniform Edition | 1947 Zodiac Press |
| she had borne about with her for years like an arrow (14) | she had borne about her for years like an arrow (10) |
| This late age of the world's experience (16) | This late age of world's experience (12) |
| who might now, for the first and last time, be within (27) | who might now, for the first time and last, be within (19) |
| "Yet," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party (287) | "Yes," said Sally, "when I heard Clarissa was giving a party (209) |
A scanned PDF of the Zodiac Edition may be found here; together with a
PDF of the Zodiac Press edition text only; and a
PDF showing all the variants between the 1929 Uniform Edition and the Zodiac Press edition.
Until 2025, no edition had been based, as I believe an edition ought to be based, on the text of the first Hogarth edition, altered with the nine revisions that Virginia Woolf made to the later printings in 1925 and 1929, and with the corrections described above to five errors that she left uncorrected in the Hogarth edition. An edition that records variant readings also, I believe, ought to present its data in readable form, not merely in skeletal form as a list. (An edition based on these guidelines was published 2025 by New York Review Books.)
Many editions of Mrs. Dalloway present a text prepared by an editor, not merely reprinted without explanation from an earlier version. These are described below; in the descriptions, the phrase "the 1942 text" refers to the reset edition issued by the Hogarth Press after Virginia Woolf’s death, apparently with no textual authority. It corrects obvious compositor's errors (e.g. "word poetry of herself", p. 129 in earlier printings), and introduces minor errors in text and layout that had not occurred in the earlier printings. The most notable error is the loss of the section break after the last of the old woman's nonsense couplets near the foot of p. 125 in the 1925 and 1929 impressions. And "the 1947 text" refers to the reset and repunctuated edition (described above) issued under the imprint of the Zodiac Press (an imprint of Chatto & Windus, which had recently acquired the Hogarth Press) and often reprinted under the Hogarth imprint.
Unless noted, all the editions listed here emend "Richard" to "Peter" as described above.
A few other editions, not listed below, include explanatory notes but no notes on the text.
G. Patton Wright’s 1990 Hogarth Press "Definitive Collected Edition" is based on the British first edition, heavily emended with variants partly derived from the American edition and partly based on the editor’s personal judgment on matters of consistency and logic. It includes extensive (and partly erroneous) lists of variants from all prior editions (including those with no textual authority) and from the marked proofs.
Note: Patton Wright's textual note on p. 207 of his edition confusingly reports that Virginia Woolf may have changed her mind after "indicating on both sets" of marked proofs that she wanted a paragraph break after "So Peter Walsh snored." In fact neither set of proofs is marked in any way at this point in the text. The paragraph break is already present in the printed proof, and accordingly occurs in the American edition. It was removed in the Hogarth Press edition, evidently in order to provide an extra line of space to accommodate the additional space that Virginia Woolf had explicitly specified in the Harcourt marked proofs (not in the Raverat proofs) two lines above.
Claire Tomalin’s 1992 Oxford World’s Classics edition has a text “based on the original edition,” but apparently reprinted from the 1947 text.
Stella McNichol’s 1992 Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition, with an introduction by Elaine Showalter, is based on the 1925 first edition, with some but not all of Virginia Woolf’s later changes; with well-considered emendations; and with notes about some other variant readings. It has often been reprinted and reset (with formatting errors) under other Penguin imprints.
Stella McNichol’s 1992 edition of the novel in a Macmillan “student compendium,” Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, has a text based on the 1925 first edition, with a few regularizing emendations.
A 1993 Everyman’s Library edition, anonymously edited but with an introduction by Nadia Fusini, is “based on the original edition,” but seems to be reprinted from the 1942 text. The same text is used in the 2021 Vintage Classics edition.
Morris Beja’s 1996 Shakespeare Head Press edition (Blackwell Publishers) is based largely on the marked proofs of the American edition, with an extensive, sometimes erroneous or tendentious, textual apparatus. It retains the error "Richard" for "Peter" near the end of the book.
David Wright’s 2000 Oxford World’s Classics edition claims to be based on the 1942 text, with minor editorial emendations, but in fact reprints the defective 1947 text with corrections (see above).
Bonnie Kime Scott’s 2005 annotated Harcourt edition uses the American text; the notes mention a few textual matters.
A 2011 Folio Society edition, anonymously edited, reports: “This edition follows the text of the first edition with minor emendations.” It adopts three of the nine revisions found in later texts, adds one mistaken emendation ("and" in "Holmes Bradshaw"), and omits a section break. (Information generously provided by Francesca Wade.) The edition includes the Introduction to the 1928 Modern Library edition.
Jo-Ann Wallace, in her 2012 Broadview Press edition, “takes the first Hogarth Press edition as my copy-text, retaining even the errors”; the text in some places, however, matches the 1942 edition, not the earlier printings. It seems likely that the text was prepared from the 1942 edition, but was then modified by incorporating the 1925 variants listed in Patton Wright's edition. The evidence for this is that the Broadview text omits the section break dropped from the 1942 printing (p. 125; see above) and has the 1929 and later reading "his hat in his hand" (p. 120; see above), which is the one textual variant that Patton Wright had not noticed; an editor working backwards from the 1942 text, using Patton Wright's apparatus, would have produced the Broadview text, and could not have known to remove "his" from this phrase in order fully to restore the 1925 version.
Anne E. Fernald’s 2015 edition in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf is the only pre-2025 edition that accurately reproduces the 1925 first edition, with a few clearly-noted emendations and one of Virginia Woolf's later revisions. The textual apparatus records variants from the proofs and (with vanishingly few omissions) from all editions that have textual authority. The text retains the error "Richard" for "Peter" near the end of the book.
Merve Emre’s 2021 Liveright edition, The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, is based closely on the 1925 text with silent emendations, but inserts a sentence from the American text that Virginia Woolf had dropped from the British 1925 text, and accidentally omits a paragraph with almost two hundred words (from "Everything had come to a standstill" through "for what purpose?", pp. 24-25 in the 1925 text).
Anne E. Fernald’s 2021 edition in the Norton Critical Editions series is based on the first American edition. It is the only edition based on the American text that restores the two section breaks marked in the proofs but invisible in the 1925 edition because they occur at the foot of a printed page.
A 2022 Renard Press (London) edition, anonymously edited, has a note claiming that its text "is based on that of the first edition, which was published by ... [the] Hogarth Press in 1925," with "spelling, punctuation and grammar ... silently corrected." The text is a baffling composite of readings from multiple texts: it is made up mostly from the first British edition, with one of Virginia Woolf's corrections for the second impression; but partly from the American text (it has "vagulous" for "vagous"); and it follows Merve Emre's 2021 edition in inserting a sentence from the American edition into a paragraph otherwise derived from the British edition.
Trudi Tate's 2025 Oxford World's Classics edition uses the emended 1947 text used by David Wright in his 2000 edition, but restores (almost invisibly) the section break dropped in the 1942 text.
All editions first published in North America are based on the American text, with the exception of Jo-Ann Wallace’s Broadview Press edition (published in Canada), Merve Emre’s Liveright edition, and the 2025 New York Review Books edition.
Any edition that claims to be based on the 1925 first British edition but has, in that portion of its text that corresponds to the 1925 edition's p. 120, line 22, "hat in his hand" (not "hat in hand") is in fact based on the 1929, 1942, or 1947 version of the text, not the 1925 first edition.
American vs. British texts: A common myth among American editors of Virginia Woolf's novels states that no conclusive evidence favors either the American or the British edition as Virginia Woolf's more-considered or later-considered text. This defies both reality and common sense. In order for the American and British editions to be published on the same day, as Virginia Woolf had arranged for most of her novels, she was obliged to send proofs for the American edition at least two weeks before she was obliged to return proof for the British edition. One of those two weeks was required by shipborne transatlantic mail; the other of those weeks was required for the full resetting the text by an American printer, as was then required by American copyright law. For the British edition, she could return the marked proofs to Edinburgh via overnight mail for the printers to make minor corrections requiring at most a few hours of labor. Absolutely no plausible reason exists for preferring the earlier American texts to the later British ones.
I prepared these scanned images by using a Czur ET-24 Pro book scanner to make digital copies of four authoritative versions of the text: the first and second Hogarth Press impressions from 1925; the Uniform Edition from 1929; the Harcourt (American) first edition from 1925; I used the same scanner to provide the text of the Introduction to the 1928 Modern Library edition. I used a Czur ET Max book scanner to make a digital copy of the 1947 Zodiac Press edition.
The less-than-perfect quality of the scanned images is the result of (1) my incompetence, (2) the relatively low-priced scanners that I used, and (3) the cheap, battered copies of the original editions that I could afford to buy. The image of the first Hogarth edition is based on a damaged ex-library copy stamped as discarded by the Cambridge Union Library.
I corrected the scanned output by manually editing the recognized text in the OCR editor features of ABBYY FineReader and Adobe Acrobat Pro; then, using those applications and Microsoft Word, I compared the scanned texts to each other in order to identify variant readings and remove any remaining scanning errors.
Edward Mendelson (edward [dot] [at] columbia [dot] edu)