Reading Order
The Hours Reading Order
The Hours (1998) by Michael Cunningham is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel structured around Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway: three women on different days separated by decades are all in relationship to Woolf's novel. Virginia Woolf writes the first pages of Mrs Dalloway in Richmond in 1923, beset by the voices in her head and negotiating with her husband Leonard about returning to London. Laura Brown reads Mrs Dalloway in Los Angeles in 1949 while planning a birthday party for her husband, feeling the suffocation of suburban domesticity and considering suicide. Clarissa Vaughan — a contemporary 'Mrs Dalloway' — prepares a party in 1990s New York for her friend Richard, a poet dying of AIDS who won the prize she is celebrating. The three stories are intercut and converge in the final section. Cunningham wrote The Hours as an act of homage to Woolf and as a meditation on what her work means to readers across the decades of the twentieth century.
Where to start
The Hours (1998) — the complete novel. Reading Mrs Dalloway first is strongly recommended; while The Hours works without it, reading it as a companion to Woolf's novel is a richer experience. The Hours is also the basis for the 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep — one of the most successful literary adaptations of its era
Complete The Hours Book List
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The Hours
Michael Cunningham·1998
The Hours — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Hours by Michael Cunningham about?
The Hours intercuts three stories: Virginia Woolf in 1923 Richmond writing the opening of Mrs Dalloway and struggling with her mental illness; Laura Brown in 1949 Los Angeles reading Mrs Dalloway on her husband's birthday while contemplating leaving her life; and Clarissa Vaughan (nicknamed 'Mrs Dalloway' by her friend Richard) in 1990s New York preparing a party for Richard, a poet dying of AIDS who has just won a major prize. All three women are defined by their relationship to a party they are either giving, reading about, or avoiding — and all three are asking the same question that Mrs Dalloway asks: what constitutes a life worth living? The three stories converge when Laura Brown appears in New York as Richard's elderly mother, and Richard falls from his window before the party can begin. The Hours is a meditation on what it means to have a life (as opposed to a merely acceptable existence), on the transmission of literary influence across time, and on the relationship between creativity and the desire for death that Woolf's own life and work embody.
Do I need to read Mrs Dalloway before The Hours?
You don't need to read Mrs Dalloway first — The Hours works as a novel on its own terms — but reading it first makes The Hours significantly richer. Cunningham's novel is in explicit dialogue with Woolf's: Clarissa Vaughan's New York day parallels Clarissa Dalloway's London day; Laura Brown's experience of reading Mrs Dalloway is one of the novel's subjects; and Virginia Woolf's sections show the novel being written. The Hours is both a homage and an act of literary criticism — it argues, through its structure, that Mrs Dalloway is about the choice between living and dying, between the social performance of the party and the authenticity of what Septimus's suicide represents. Readers who come to The Hours without knowing Mrs Dalloway often seek out the Woolf novel immediately after and find the experience of reading both together retroactively enriching.
What are the three time periods in The Hours?
The Hours moves between three time periods and three characters. The first is 1923 Richmond, Surrey, where Virginia Woolf is living with her husband Leonard — recovering from a breakdown, under a regime of rest and regular meals, writing the opening pages of what will become Mrs Dalloway. The second is 1949 Los Angeles, where Laura Brown, a young suburban housewife, is spending her husband's birthday reading Mrs Dalloway and planning his birthday cake while contemplating the hotel room where she thinks she might kill herself. The third is 1990s New York City (implied to be 1999), where Clarissa Vaughan — a book editor nicknamed 'Mrs Dalloway' by her friend Richard, a poet dying of AIDS — is preparing a party to celebrate his receiving the Carrouthers Prize. The three periods are separated by approximately 25 years each, and the novel moves between them throughout before converging in the final section when Richard falls from his window and Laura Brown appears as his elderly mother.
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