In the Orchard

‘Miranda slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath the apple tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger still seemed to point… as if she had fallen asleep just there.’ First published in 1923 but failing to gain the same fame as her groundbreaking collection Monday or Tuesday, Woolf’s short story In the Orchard is perhaps her most experimental, painting the same picture in three very different ways. Centred on a sleeping Miranda, set in an orchard redolent of her own at Monk’s House, Woolf toys with the powerful style of retelling, leaving the reader to read between the lines. Also included in this edition is ‘Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car’, a short essay that, taken with In the Orchard, contextualises the work and firmly relocates the reader to the Bloomsbury Set’s Sussex.