Appearing in 1919, Virginia Woolf's sharp, funny second novel was often overlooked as "traditional," yet a closer reading today shows us just how modern it was. On the surface, Woolf plays with Shakespearean tropes, following friends Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet as love is variously confessed and rebuffed, partners switched, weddings planned and cancelled. But women's roles are shifting in the suffrage era, and Woolf's novel conceals a challenge to the male writers who dominate the Edwardian age, undercutting the gender bias on which their plots depend. This illustrated edition includes an insightful introduction by Lauren Groff.