<i>She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered . . .</i><br>—<i>Virginia Woolf, </i>To The Lighthouse<br><br>An illuminating exploration of how seven of the greatest English novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—<i>Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, </i>and<i> Between the Acts</i>—portray the essential experiences of life.<br><br>Edward Mendelson—a professor of English at Columbia University—illustrates how each novel is a living portrait of the human condition while expressing its author's complex individuality and intentions and emerging from the author's life and times. He explores <i>Frankenstein</i> as a searing representation of child neglect and abandonment and <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> as a portrait of an ideal but almost impossible adult love, and leads us to a fresh and fascinating new understanding of each of the seven novels, reminding us—in the most captivating way—why they matter.