[4] Professor DeSalvo worked for seven years on the project of reconstructing the text of the novel as it might have appeared in 1912, before Woolf had begun serious revisions.

She reviewed more than 1,000 manuscript pages from Woolf's private papers, dating the earlier versions of the work by small organisational clues such as the colour of ink used or noticing where a pen had last left off writing.

[5] DeSalvo's Melymbrosia attempts to restore the text of the novel as Woolf had originally conceived it, containing more candid political commentary on such issues as homosexuality, women's suffrage, and colonialism.

According to DeSalvo, Woolf was "warned by colleagues that publishing such an outspoken indictment of Britain could prove disastrous to her fledgling career".

Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage.

St. John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey, and Helen Ambrose is, to some extent, inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell.

"[10] Literary scholar Phyllis Rose writes in her introduction to the novel, "No later novel of Woolf's will capture so brilliantly the excitement of youth.