Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote with rare insight about the confusion, mystery and uncertainty of everyday life. Her stream of consciousness narratives brought sharp and fleeting glimpses into truths of gender relations, psychology and the power of the poetic perspective. Woolf's 1931 novel The Waves, originally drafted in a series of seven notebooks including the one reproduced for this cover, is made up of soliloquies spoken by the six main characters. Today, these seven notebooks are a part of The New York Public Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature and are featured in the new Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library Treasures.