Woolf described this work on the title-page of the first draft as `the life of anybody'. The Waves (1931) traces the lives and interactions of seven friends in an exploratory and sensuous narrative.

The Waves was conceived, brooded on, and written during a highly political phase in Woolf's career, when she was speaking on issues of gender and of class. This was also the period when her love affair with Vita Sackville-West was at its most intense.

The work is often described as if it were the product of a secluded, disembodied sensibility. Yet its writing is supremely engaged and engaging, providing an experience which the reader is unlikely to forget.

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