Virginia Woolf

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s. Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' …

Set in the eponymous botanic garden in London on a hot July day, the narrative gives brief glimpses of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed. The story begins with a description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. Woolf mixes the colours of the petals of the flowers, floating to the ground, with the seemingly …