Andrea Barrett: The Transformation – Virginia Woolf and The Years (January 2017)

In 1931, Virginia Woolf made her first notes for what she called “an Essay-Novel, called The Pargiters.” By 1934 she had a 900-page draft, which she revised heavily several times. Barrett discusses the transformation of those earlier drafts into the novel we know as The Years, which—radically different from her earlier conceptions—was published in 1937.