Die Jahre

Torn between acute despair and natural pleasure, Virginia Woolf works for four years on her penultimate and most extensive novel, "The Years." Time and again, between October 1912 and April 1936, she confides the torments of writing and rewriting, as well as moments of very happy freedom, to her diary. And when the most peculiar of her adventures is celebrated by the press as a masterpiece upon its release in March 1937, and remains at the top of the best-selling titles in the Herald Tribune for weeks, she notes with relief and pride: "25,000 copies were sold - by far my record." This success may be partly attributed to the surprisingly conventional narrative style of Virginia Woolf, which, at first glance, appears almost traditional, following the concrete chronological plot of a generational novel.