A LECTURE BY DAVID TAYLOR Thursday, April 28, 2016 4.30 p.m. Class of 1941 Lecture Room University of Delaware Library Free and open to the public • Refreshments In this lecture, noted British historian David Taylor will use unpublished material from the Lushington archive to reveal the little-known background to Virginia Woolf’s novels To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway. Taylor will discuss Woolf’s relationship with her childhood friend Kitty Lushington, and the remarkable and well-connected Lushington family. Kitty Lushington was Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway.” The “three Miss Lushingtons” spent family holidays with Virginia’s family at Talland House, Cornwall, which Woolf later used for the setting of To The Lighthouse. Kitty’s engagement to Leopold Maxse at Talland House was Woolf’s “first introduction to the passion of love.” This episode was used by Woolf for the climactic moment of the first part of her novel. Kitty later established herself as a well-known London hostess and Woolf used her again as the model for ‘Mrs Dalloway’.