Flush

Virginia Woolf is renowned for such avant-garde novels as 'The Hours', 'The Waves' and her gender-swapping masterpiece, 'Orlando'. Never one to shun innovation, in 1933 she took on a new challenge: to create a completely new genre and write the world's first biography of a dog. 'Flush' tells the story of a young red cocker spaniel that becomes the pet of the celebrated poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But his new mistress suffers from constant ill health, and Flush is forced to exchange the rural life he loves for a staid, urban existence as the house-pet of an invalid. Woolf uses the anthropomorphic style of the novel to great effect, giving the reader a dog's-eye-view of humanity and its foibles, as well as musing on such larger themes as friendship and the nature of freedom.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) ranks among the major literary figures of all time. With her novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves, she reinvented the art of storytelling and shaped modern culture's self-understanding to the present day. In landmark essays, letters, and diaries, Woolf insisted on a woman's right to tell her story on her own terms.