Mrs Dalloway

The French translation was published four years after the original English edition. It was the work of Simone David, about whom almost nothing is known, and it remained the only official French translation available until 1993. It appeared in the most cosmopolitan collection of its day, the eponymous Cabinet Cosmopolite at Stock, which also published Kafka, Hesse, Zweig, Tolstoy, Wilde and Svevo.

The translation is accompanied by a preface by André Maurois, a leading figure of Anglo-compatible French literature at the time, in which he describes how “Virginia Woolf goes beyond impressionism through this vision of the beauty and grandeur of simple things,” as the novel shows how each ordinary day can secretly be the stage for profound drama — or inner revelation.

A fine copy, partially unopened.