a Reference to one of two bronze Sphinxes that flanked Cleopatra’s Needle, an obelisk located on the London Embankment.
b Area of London that was once the site of a pleasure garden (similar to an outdoor amusement park).
c Oldest college at Cambridge University, founded in 1284.
d Reference to two prints: one of the Roman Colosseum and one of Edward VII’s wife, Queen Alexandra (1844-1925).
e Greek hero of the epic poem the Odyssey, attributed to the Greek poet Homer; Odysseus spends twenty years struggling to return home after the Trojan War.
f Imaginary town in South America bordering a river and next to a jungle.
g Greek lyric poet (c.522-c.438 B.C.).
h Roman writer Petronius (d. A.D. 66), author of the satirical romance Satyricon; Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84-c.54 B.C.).
j Isolde’s lines in German composer Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (1859), as translated by Henrietta and Frederick Corder in 1882.
k English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) was a favorite of Woolf; several volumes of his letters have been published.
l River in Spain and Portugal.
m The Travellers Club, located in Pall Mall, London, was founded in 1819 for gentlemen who had traveled or resided abroad.
n English novelist Henry Fielding (1707-1754) is buried at the English Cemetery in Lisbon, Portugal.
o American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).
p Fictitious Latin scientific name for duckweed.
q Elegy (1821) on the death of poet John Keats, by English poet Percy Bysshe Shellev.
r English portrait painters Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) and George Romney (1734-1802).
s German city famous for its Wagner festivals.
t Wagner’s last opera (1882), a favorite at Bayreuth.
u English painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts (1817-1904); Hungarian violinist and composer Joseph Joachim (1831-1907).
v William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), a Conservative prime minister.
w Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil (1830-1903), third marquess of Salisbury and Conservative prime minister; Alfred the Great (849-899), king of Wessex.
x Richard Dalloway speaking (Latin).
y Quotation from Ariel’s song in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (act 1, scene 2).
z Quotation from stanza 40 of Shelley’s poem Adonais (see footnote on p. 39).
aa That is, both Oxford and Cambridge; Trinity is a college at Cambridge.
ab Reference to speeches by British politician and writer Edmund Burke, published in 1790 and 1774-1775, respectively.
ac John Bright served under William Gladstone, British prime minister from 1868 to 1870; Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister in 1868 and 1874-1880.
ae Herbert Henry Asquith, Liberal prime minister (1908-1916); Sir Austen Chamberlain, chancellor of the Exchequer (1903-1905 and 1919-1921).
af Sailing houseboat used on the Nile River.
ag Beowulf, the earliest known English epic, probably dates from the early eighth century; Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was an English poet and critic.
ah That is, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1778), a six-volume work by English historian Edward Gibbon.
ai Ending stanza of “He Abjures Love,” by English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
aj Reference to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who was feted upon the birth of her first child in 1909.
ak That is, the Cambridge Union Society, a debating society founded in 1815 at Cambridge University.
al English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began excavations at Knossos, an ancient Minoan palace on the Greek island of Crete, in 1899.
am Dead liturgical language of the Copts, a Christian sect of ancient Egypt.
an Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828-1906), Norwegian dramatist and poet.
ao Diana of the Crossways (1885) is a novel by English author George Meredith about the breakdown of a marriage.
ap Heroine of Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House (1879).
aq Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington (1769-1852), was a commander of the allied forces at the battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon was defeated.
ar Italian patriot and soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), who during various periods of his life lived and fought in South America.
as Belgian priest (born Joseph De Veuster; 1841-1889) who ran a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
at King’s College, Cambridge University.
au “Barcarolle” is a famous Venetian boat song from act 2 of the opera Les Contes d’Hoffinann (Tales of Hoffmann; 1881), by French composer Jacques Levy Offenbach.
av English dance for four couples.
aw Popular English hunting song (c.1820) by John Woodcock Graves; ken is archaic for “know.”
ax That is, Mr. John Jorrocks, a fox-hunting cockney grocer created by English novelist Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864) in humorous short sketches for New Sporting Magazine.
ay Novel (1847) by French author Honoré de Balzac about a spinster seeking revenge.
az Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), German poet and playwright.
ba Quotation from the opening chapter of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (see footnote on p. 101).
bb Reference to a 1910 bill for women’s suffrage that was voted down in Parliament; British statesman David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was a Liberal member of Parliament at the time.
bc Reference to French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805).
bd Augustus Edwin John (1878-1961), British painter famous for his portraits of authors.
be Conservative British prime minister (1902-1905).
bf Series of dialogues on ideal love by Greek philosopher Plato (c.428-348 or 347 B.C.).
bg That is, admittance tickets; some hospitals for the poor had an application system.
bh British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, author of The Subjection of Women (1869), served briefly as a member of Parliament; the reference is to a portrait of him painted by George Frederic Watts.
bi That is, the Girls’ Friendly Society, a Christian organization founded in London in 1875 to help young workingwomen.
bj William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist; Woolf’s father’s first wife, Harriet Marian, was Thackeray’s daughter.
bk Titles, respectively, of a novel (1847) by English author Emily Brontë and a play (1903) by English dramatist George Bernard Shaw.
bl From the Bible, Psalms 56:1, 5-6a and 58:6-7 (New Revised Standard Version).
bm Account by Greek historian Xenophon (c.430-c.352 B.C.) of a military expedition led by Cyrus the Younger of Persia, in which Xenophon participated by leading the Greek retreat after the disastrous battle of Cunaxa.
bn Title of an Elizabethan prose romance (1578, 1580) by English writer John Lyly (1554?-1606).
bo Poem (1782) by William Cowper.
br Terence is reading from a fictitious novel.
bs Religious house in London that later became bachelor lodgings for lawyers and other scholars.
bt Slang term for “paunch.”
bu When Woolf was writing this novel (1905-1912), the Russian Revolution (1917) had not yet occurred.
bv Lines 45-50 of “A New Forest Ballad,” by English clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley.