Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Um, besides Edward Albee… pretty much everyone. She's super-intimidating.

Woolf was an important pioneer of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Though the mind of an average person was not considered interesting or important enough by earlier writers to merit elevating it to art, for Woolf and for other Modernists, it was the most important thing—the best subject a writer could choose.

Mrs. Dalloway

This tour-de-force novel, written in 1925, particularly demonstrates the stream of consciousness technique. We sample the thoughts of a cross-section of London society, from Mrs. Dalloway and her comfortable middle-class friends to a shell-shocked veteran of WWI.

"A Room of One's Own"

Woolf speaks about female writers and writing to a male audience not used to thinking about women as creatures with complex minds. Ugh. Every time we want to go back and live in the 1920s, a reality check like this rears its ugly head.

Orlando

Woolf's novel asks questions about gender no earlier writer in English had ever asked before. How's that for making it new? Dang, Woolf. Your smarts scare us.

This novel, dedicated to Woolf's flame, Vita Sackville-West, is a hybrid: sort of a science-fiction novel, kind of a pseudo-biography. This book blurs lines of genre and gender with cross-dressing zest. It couldn't be more Modernist.