1925 · Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York · checked against the Hogarth Press printing
Read Mrs Dalloway online with the hour marked in the margin, from ten in the morning to past midnight.
Woolf’s novel has no chapters. It has one Wednesday in June 1923 and Big Ben striking through it. Our edition puts a small hour marker in the margin each time the day moves on, so you can read Mrs Dalloway online in sittings and find your place by the clock. The whole book is free to read. Printed and large-print packs for book clubs are quoted on request.
- Words
- about 64,000
- Reading time
- 4 h 29 min
- Sections
- 12, by line break
- Hour markers
- 14
- Group packs
- Quoted on request
Section 1 · about 10 a.m.
Read the first pages online: Clarissa goes out for flowers
The first section runs about 5,400 words, twenty-three minutes. It ends with Clarissa home again, the flowers bought, and Peter Walsh about to ring the bell. There is no chapter one in this book, so this is the nearest thing to it.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
Source: Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1925, p. 3. The title keeps its full stop in the text (“Mrs.”) as printed.
Hour markers
Where the clock strikes, and whose head you are in
We place a marker only where Woolf names the time or a clock strikes. We don’t guess the hours in between. Fourteen markers in all; these are the ones readers use most to stop and start.
| Marker | What is happening | Reading so far |
|---|---|---|
| about 10 a.m. | Clarissa crosses Victoria Street toward Bond Street. Big Ben strikes the first time. | 0 min |
| 11 a.m. | The skywriting aeroplane over the Mall. Septimus and Rezia in Regent’s Park. | about 35 min |
| 11:30 a.m. | Peter Walsh calls on Clarissa, unannounced, back from India. | about 1 h 5 min |
| Noon | Septimus and Rezia arrive in Harley Street to see Sir William Bradshaw. | about 1 h 50 min |
| 1:30 p.m. | Lunch at Lady Bruton’s. Richard decides to tell Clarissa he loves her, and doesn’t. | about 2 h 25 min |
| 3 p.m. | Richard comes home with roses. Clarissa hears the clock. | about 2 h 45 min |
| about 6 p.m. | The Bloomsbury flat. The last section of Septimus’s story. | about 3 h 25 min |
| Evening to past midnight | The party. Everyone arrives. The book ends with Peter looking at Clarissa. | about 3 h 55 min |
Editor’s note on the two 1925 printings
Mrs Dalloway came out in London (Hogarth Press) and New York (Harcourt, Brace) within a day of each other in May 1925, and the two texts differ in a few hundred small places. Woolf corrected the proofs separately. Neither is wrong. Our base is the Harcourt text, because it is the one American readers had, and we have checked every section break against the Hogarth printing too.
The section breaks matter more here than in almost any novel. They are the only structure the book has. Most free files drop at least four of them, and a reader suddenly finds herself in Septimus’s head without any white space to warn her. We restored all eleven breaks, and in two places where the Harcourt page break hid a gap, we followed Hogarth.
Spelling is Woolf’s: “colour”, “grey”, “to-day” with its hyphen. We did not tidy it.
Content notes
Shell shock and mental illness throughout Septimus’s story, a suicide in the late afternoon section, and period attitudes to psychiatry that the novel is openly angry about. If a reader in your group needs to know where the suicide falls, it is just after the “about 6 p.m.” marker.
Correction ledger
Changes to this text since launch
- 2022-06-15Launch. Eleven section breaks confirmed against both 1925 printings. Whole text
- 2022-07-11Hour marker “11:30 a.m.” moved down one paragraph to sit where the clock actually strikes. Section 2, margin only
- 2023-02-03
todayto-day, hyphen restored as printed. Section 4 - 2024-04-27Semicolon restored in a long sentence of Peter’s where our file had a comma. Section 3, Regent’s Park
Ordering a pack for your group
Tell us about the group
Number of readers, meeting dates and format. Woolf in large print is a common request from library groups.
We suggest a split by the clock
Two meetings work well, breaking at the 1:30 p.m. lunch. The hour markers print in the pack margin too.
You receive a quote by email
Priced on group size and format. No payment is taken on this site.
Confirm and we prepare it
Same proofed text, same markers, a short note on reading without chapters.
Before you start Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway has no chapters. How do I stop and start?
Woolf marks her sections with line breaks only. We keep those and add hour markers in the margin, so you can stop at “Noon” and come back to it.
Are the hour markers part of Woolf’s text?
No. They sit in the margin, set in a different typeface, and never in the text column. The novel is printed as published.
Is this book right for a first-time Woolf reader?
Yes, more than To the Lighthouse. It is short and it follows a clock. It is not for a reader who needs a plot to pull them along; not much happens, and that is the point.
Group packs · quoted on request
Ask for a group-pack quote for Mrs Dalloway
Tell us how many readers and when you meet. The correspondent replies by email.