HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.’ One hot summer’s day in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway sets out to buy flowers for the party she is to host in her London home.

Over the course of the day, she faces the ghosts of her past, as an unexpected visitor forces her to revisit the memories of her youth.

Meanwhile, shell shocked war veteran Septimus Warren-Smith descends into anguish, and Mrs Dalloway is confronted with the fragility of life. Revolutionary in form, Mrs Dalloway was one of Woolf’s greatest achievements, and a novel that has continued to inspire readers and writers to this day.