Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William, and her dangerous attraction to the lower-class Ralph. As she struggles to decide, the lives of two other women - women?s rights activist Mary Datchet and Katharine?s mother, struggling to weave together the documents, events and memories of her father?s life into a biography - impinge on hers with unexpected and intriguing consequences. Virginia Woolf?s light, delicate second novel is both a love story and a social comedy, yet it also subtly undermines these traditions, questioning a woman?s role and the very nature of experience.