This page contains links to searchable scanned PDF images of the early printings of To the Lighthouse and to PDF documents containing the texts of those editions, extracted from the scanned images. This page also includes notes on existing editions of the novel and a lightly edited text of the November 1926 typescript of "Time Passes" made for separate translation into French. It also includes three extensive passages deleted from the marked proofs in order to reduce the page count of the printed book.
Three printings of the novel have textual authority: the first American and first British editions from 1927, and the 1930 fourth impression of the first British edition, published as part of the Uniform Edition, with revisions evidently made by Virginia Woolf.
The American edition, although published on the same day as the British edition, represents an earlier state of the text than the British edition. The American text is based on proof corrections made by the author before she made her final proof corrections for the British edition.
The three authoritative printings are as follows:
All other editions published during the author's lifetime (those by the Albatross Press in 1932 and by Everyman's Library in 1938), and all editions published after the author's death (in 1941), have no independent textual authority. The Albatross Press edition is notably defective, with a few paragraphs printed out of sequence.
Vastly superior scanned images of the first American edition, of the first British edition, and of the 1932 photo-offset reprint of the 1930 impression, together with scanned images of the author's notebooks, typescripts, and much else may be found at the uniquely informative site woolfonline.com.
Virginia Woolf made sixteen changes to the February 1930 fourth impression, for the "Uniform Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf" (page numbers refer to the scanned PDFs):
The third impresson (May 1928) introduced a printing error that persists in the fourth impression: Page 216, line 7: the comma dropped out of the plate at the end of the line, after "upstairs now", leaving a narrow blank space beween "now" and the right margin.
The fourth impression adds a further printing error: Page 119, line 17: "power" is misprinted "dower", the first letter having come loose from the plate and then having been restored upside-down.
The fourth impression (with the two errors corrected that are noted above) is the most accurate text, but probably requires two emendations, both suggested by Stella McNichol in her 1992 Penguin edition (page numbers refer to the scanned PDFs):
Stella McNichol's Penguin edition seems to be the only one that takes explicit notice of the changes in the 1930 impression. However, she suggests in her notes (and in some instances applies to her text) around a dozen editorial emendations which seem either mistaken or probably needless.
Virginia Woolf's draft manuscript correctly numbers the sections of "The Lighthouse," but the British editions misnumber all the sections after the first; the section numbered 3 is the second section, the section numbered 4 is the third, etc. The American edition corrects the numbering (and uses roman numerals, not arabic). I believe that this error ought not to be corrected, as the section numbers are those that Virginia Woolf saw on the page, and may, possibly, have had particular significance for her. (The 1932 Albatross Edition corrects the misnumbering. The 1938 Everyman's Library edition preserves the erroneous numbering of sections 3 to the end, but creates a spurious section 2 by dividing the first section into two, starting its section 2 with "Suddenly Mr. Ramsay raised his head".)
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).
The sixteen differences between the first British edition and the 1930 Uniform Edition may be seen in this PDF document that displays the variants in different colors (blue and struck through for the first edition, red and underlined for the Uniform Edition).
A note on the marked proofs. One full and one partial set of proofs, marked for Harcourt, Brace to use when setting the American edition in type, are in the Mortimer Rare Book Room of the William Allan Neilson Library of Smith College. These are reproduced on woolfonline.com. Three extensive passages deleted in the marked proofs in order to reduce the page count of the printed book (and thus avoid requiring an additional signature for only two pages) are transcribed here.
I am grateful to Mark Hussey, Stephen Barkway, and Stuart N. Clarke for indispensable help in preparing this page.
In Novermber 1926 Virginia Woolf made a separate typescript of "Time Passes" for translation into French by Charles Mauron, published in Commerce, cahier 10, hiver 1926.
A lightly edited text of the typescript may be found here. I have corrected a minor typing error ("tress" for "trees" on p. 6, line 5); added a comma between "step" and "window" on p. 23, 3 lines up; and have added a possessive apostrophe in "cliff's" on p. 30, last line. On p. 11, line 4, Virginia Woolf inserted the eight words starting "leaning her" following the full stop after "it all"; I have changed that full stop to a comma.
Scanned images of the typescript (and of the translated text in Commerce) may be found at woolfonline.com. A transcript of the text was first published by James M. Haule in Twentieth Century Literature, Autumn 1983. Another transcript was published in Susan Dick's 1992 Shakespeare Head Edition of the novel (see below). Both transcripts (unlike the edited text provided here) indicate the author's deletions, insertions, and revisions.
No existing edition is based, as I believe an edition ought to be based, on the text of the first Hogarth edition, altered with the sixteen revisions that Virginia Woolf made to the 1930 printing, and with the two emendations described above.
Many existing editions of To the Lighthouse present a text prepared by an editor, not merely reprinted without explanation from an earlier version; these are described below. Some other editions, not listed below, include explanatory notes but no notes on the text.
The anonymously-edited 1990 Hogarth Press "Definitive Collected Edition" follows the text of the first British edition. It includes a partly inaccurate list of substantive variants between the first British and first American editions, based on the list in A Concordance to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, by James M. Haule and Philip H. Smith, Jr. (1983), who used a 1977 reissue of the Hogarth Press edition and a 1964 reprint of the American text, mistaking the printing errors in these editions for variants in the original texts.
Susan Dick's 1992 Shakespeare Head Press edition (Blackwell Publishers) is based on the marked proofs of the American edition, with an extensive list of variants from the unmarked proofs (including long passages cut before publication) and from the British edition. It includes intelligently-chosen emendations, some of them matching the author's later revisions (although the edition does not note the existence of those revisions). It also includes the full text of the early typescript of "Time Passes" that Virginia Woolf prepared for translation into French.
Margaret Drabble's 1992 Oxford World's Classics edtion describes itself as using "the Hogarth Press text, first published in 1927"; its text is in fact that of the 1930 fourth impression (which is not mentioned by Drabble), or a later reprint. It includes a selective list of variants between the first British and first American editions.
Stella McNichol’s 1992 Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition, with an introduction by Hermione Lee, is based on the 1927 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. This seems to be the only edition that takes account of the changes in the 1930 fourth impression. It has often been reprinted and reset (with formatting errors not present in the 1992 edition) under other Penguin imprints. It includes a selective list of variants between the first British and first American editions.
Sandra Kemp's 1994 Routledge English Texts edition describes its text as "based on that of the original Hogarth Press editon"; its text seems to combine readings from the first British edition and the 1930 fourth impression (which is not mentioned by Kemp).
Mark Hussey's 2005 annotated edition uses the American text, with a few emendations; the textual notes discuss some textual matters.
David Bradshaw's 2006 Oxford World's Classics edition follows the text of the first British edition with minor house-style variants. Its note on the text suggests that readings in Margaret Drabble's 1992 edition were errors, but those readings were in fact derived from the 1930 fourth impression (which is not mentioned by Bradshaw). It includes a selective list of variants between the first British and first American editions.
Margaret Homans' 2023 Norton Critical Edition uses the text of the American edition. It includes an extensive list of variants between the unmarked proofs, the first British and first American editions, and some variants from the early typescript of "Time Passes" that Virginia Woolf prepared for translation into French.
All editions first published in North America are based on the American text.
I prepared these scanned images by using a Czur ET-24 Pro book scanner to make digital copies of three versions of the text: the first and fourth ("Uniform Edition") Hogarth Press impressions from 1927 and 1930; and the Harcourt (American) first edition from 1927. The less-than-perfect quality of the scanned images is the result of (1) my incompetence, (2) the relatively low-priced scanner that I used, and (3) the cheap, battered copies of the original editions that I could afford to buy.
I corrected the scanned output by proofreading all four versions 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] mendelson [at] columbia [dot] edu)