This edition of Mrs Dalloway includes substantial explanatory notes compiling past scholarship while identifying new allusions, and a list of textual variants among all editions in Woolf's lifetime. It also features a composition history, documenting how Woolf's reading, friendships, and culture contributed to the book, and Woolf's seldom-reprinted 1928 introduction.

Mrs Dalloway, created from a series of short stories, is one of Virginia Woolf's best-known novels. Thematically it conveys a rich and genuine humanity, in part through Woolf's use of interior perspectives. This edition provides a substantial introduction, which discusses the composition history of the novel and shows how Woolf's reading, writing, and personal life as well as the world around her contributed to the book. Explanatory notes review decades of scholarship while identifying numerous allusions to Homer, Shakespeare, Tennyson and others. A complete list of textual variants shows differences among all English language editions of the novel published in Woolf's lifetime. The notes call attention to variants of particular interest, including Woolf's substantial addition, at proof stage, to the scene of Septimus' suicide. This edition also includes Woolf's seldom-reprinted 1928 introduction, along with a full chronology of composition, and a more general chronology of Woolf's life and works.