A Centenary of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

Overview

Join us in Oxford for this in-person day school and celebrate a century since the publication of Mrs. Dalloway on 14 May 2025.

We will discuss its lasting impact on literary and popular culture, considering both its immediate contexts (as a post-WWI novel written between 1922 and 1925 and set in London), and its later reception over the decades. Critics and editors of Woolf’s works will talk about Woolf’s novel against the contexts of literary modernism, adaptation, and gardens – and will discuss the significance of Mrs. Dalloway against Woolf’s other works, and those of her contemporaries.

This enlightening and lively day school will end with a Q&A discussion that considers Woolf’s legacy, 100 years on for the publication of what was arguably her most important, and certainly her most well-known, novel.

Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 GMT on 4 February 2026.

Programme details

9.45am
Registration at Rewley House reception 

10am
1925 in Literary Modernism
Prof. Tara Stubbs

11.15am
Tea/coffee break

11.45am
Title tbc
Prof. Michael Whitworth

1pm
Lunch break

2pm
‘Not in so many words’: Mrs. Dalloway’s Language of Flowers
Dr. Karina Jakubowicz

3.15pm           
Tea/coffee break

3.45pm
Q&A: A century of Mrs. Dalloway
All speakers, chaired by Prof. Tara Stubbs

5pm
Event disperses

Fees

Description Costs
Event Fee (includes tea/coffee) £120.00
Baguette lunch £7.50
Hot lunch £21.25

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit or are a full-time student in the UK you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees.

Concessionary fees for short courses

Payment

Please use the 'Book' button on this page. Alternatively, please contact us to obtain an application form.

Tutors

Dr Karina Jakubowicz - Speaker

Karina Jakubowicz is a writer and academic who teaches at Florida State University on their London Campus. She also gives lectures for Literature Cambridge and teaches at their Virginia Woolf Summer School. Her PhD was on gardens in the work of Virginia Woolf, and a monograph based on this research is forthcoming with EUP in 2022. Her research deals with the themes of landscape, horticulture, and gardening in literature, but she has also worked on subjects as wide-ranging as supernatural literature, film adaptation, and religion and belief in the twentieth century. She has published widely on the work of several modernist authors including Katherine Mansfield, and recently co-edited a volume of essays on the theme of heresy, titled Heresy and Borders in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2021). She is also the host and producer of the Virginia Woolf Podcast, which is available at https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk/podcasts.

Prof Tara Stubbs - Speaker and Chair

Professor Tara Stubbs is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at OUDCE, and a Fellow of Kellogg College Oxford. For 2017–2020 she was the Academic Programme Director of the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford. Her first book was American Literature and Irish Culture, 1910–1955 (2013), which was re-issued in paperback in 2017. Her interests include American and Irish literature, modernism and poetry, and she has published widely in these fields. In 2017 she co-edited the essay collection Navigating the Transnational in Modern American Literature and Culture (2017), and her second monograph, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020, was The Modern Irish Sonnet: Revision and Rebellion.

Prof Michael Whitworth - Speaker

Michael Whitworth is Fellow and Tutor in English at Merton College, Oxford. His publications include Reading Modernist Poetry (2010) and Virginia Woolf, Authors in Context Series (2005). He is the editor of Modernism: A Guide to Criticism (2006) and co-editor, with Anna Snaith, of Locating Woolf: The Politics of Space and Place (2009). He is currently working on an edition of Woolf’s Night and Day for CUP.

Application

Please use the 'Book' or 'Apply' button on this page. Alternatively, please contact us to obtain an application form.

Accommodation

If you wish to stay with us before and/or after the event, please contact our Residential Centre for availability and discounted rates.

Call +44 (0) 1865 270362 or email res-ctr@conted.ox.ac.uk

Our accommodation in Wellington Square has been rated as 4-Star Campus Accommodation under Visit England. All bedrooms are modern, comfortably furnished with tea/coffee making facilities, Freeview television, private bath/shower rooms and free WiFi. For more details see our accommodation information.