The Years

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published during her lifetime. The Years follows the lives of the Pargiters, a large middle-class London family, from an uncertain spring in 1880 to a party on a summer evening in the 1930s. We see them each endure and remember heart-break, loss, radical change and stifling conformity, marriage and regret. Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime, and is a powerful indictment of 'Victorianism' and its values. Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives.