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Created January 25, 1999
How did readers respond to The Waves upon publication?
Woolf’s admirers accepted The Waves as an extension of her earlier works, relating them mostly to To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and A Room of One’s Own but reflecting her other works as well. Most highly regarded the book as a work of art and perhaps the best of Woolf’s work, especially Woolf’s husband, Leonard. Woolf perhaps was her most critical critic, calling the book jerky and unreadable. However the book probably received far more positive criticism than negative from critics as well as the general public and the book was declared a success by the number of copies sold.
Modern and Contemporary Reviewers
(qtd. from Hussey 356-57)
· "near unanimity supports Leonard Woolf’s contention that The Waves is Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece" (Maria DiBattista).
· "Exquisitely written, supremely complex, almost incomprehensible" (Mitchell Leaska).
· "a metaphysical poet who has chosen prose-fiction for her medium" (Gerald Bullett)
One other modern critic worth quoting:
· "Virginia Woolf’s analysis of human feelings and relationships in The Waves is unusually fine, her sensitive understanding of man’s attempts to find a way out of his loneliness and his confusion is superb. Thus, as significant a modernist milestone as this work is, it is not only because of its experimental nature or its successful interplay of form and meaning that The Waves is among Virginia Woolf’s most important novels, but also its penetrating quality" (Susan Gorsky 118).