Political and social change during Woolf's lifetime led her to address the role of the state and the individual. Michael Whitworth shows how ideas and images from contemporary novelists, philosophers, theorists, and scientists fuelled her writing, and how critics, film-makers, and novelists have reinterpreted her work for later generations. - ;During Virginia Woolf's lifetime Britain's position in the world changed, and so did the outlook of its people. The Boer War and the First World War forced politicians and citizens alike to ask how far the power of the state extended into the lives of in