The leaning graceful trees with black bracelets circling the silver bark were distant about a ship’s length.”

She had the look of a commander pacing his deck. One hand was deep stuck in her jacket pocket the other held a foolscap sheet. “Miss La Trobe was pacing to and fro between the leaning birch trees. Around the Olivers gather a disparate group of characters through whom we witness the comings and goings of the day, as Woolf weaves together their various musings and concerns. The Oliver family Isa, Giles and their young children, are staying with Giles’ father Bartholomew Oliver and his sister Lucy Swithin at Pointz Hall. The pageant attended by all sections of the community, the grand and not so grand – is a grand celebration of English history, a play within a play. The day starts well, the weather looks like being fine. In typical British fashion on such occasions there is some discussion about the weather – and will the barn need to be used. It is the day of the annual village pageant at Pointz Hall – which has become quite a local tradition. Vague references made to the unsettled continent lying a few miles across the channel. We are reminded of flight by the swallows in the skies above the characters who muse about what may be ahead – the legions of aircraft which will soon take to the skies. Throughout the novel there are illusions to the coming war. The war looms large throughout the novel, Virginia Woolf of course writing the book after hostilities had begun – it is clear she was very affected by it. Taking place on one English summer day in 1939, Between the Acts perfectly re-creates a long June day before the war changes everything for the comfortable upper classes. We will never know what revisions and alterations she might have made.

OL21197946W Page_number_confidence 87.80 Pages 166 Partner Innodata Ppi 300 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20200923205722 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 277 Scandate 20200918183917 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 0140008969 Tts_version 4.Between the Acts was Virginia Woolf’s final novel – published posthumously – it is a novel which remains as she left it when she took her own life in 1941. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 15:07:07 Boxid IA1941610 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

Woolf between the acts