Which novel by Virginia Woolf takes place in a single day?

Which novel by Virginia Woolf takes place in a single day? The answer is Mrs Dalloway.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway follows Clarissa Dalloway through one day in June 1923 as she prepares for a party at her London home. The action moves through the city and into the memories and thoughts of several characters, including Clarissa, the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, and Clarissa’s former admirer Peter Walsh.

Although the novel covers only one day in clock time, Woolf expands that day through stream-of-consciousness narration. Sounds, places and encounters trigger memories of adolescence, lost relationships, the First World War and changing social expectations. The result is a much larger emotional and historical story than its compact timeframe suggests.

Published in 1925, the novel is a major example of literary modernism. It is sometimes confused with To the Lighthouse, another Woolf novel structured around time and memory, but To the Lighthouse spans a much longer period and includes the famous “Time Passes” section. Mrs Dalloway also reworks material from Woolf’s earlier plans for a novel called The Hours, a title later used by Michael Cunningham for his 1998 novel.