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. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modeled after important figures in Woolf's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell.

Set in Edwardian London, Night and Day contrasts the daily lives and romantic attachments of two acquaintances, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet. The novel examines the relationships between love, marriage, happiness, and success.

The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob (except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective). Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms.

La senora Ramsay planea hacer una excursion a un faro con sus ocho hijos y algunos amigos, pero el mal tiempo y la autoridad de un marido prepotente hara que sus planes se deshagan, lo que supone un enfrentamiento entre los miembros de la familia contra el senor Ramsay. Al faro, la novela de Virginia Woolf que posee mas elementos autobiograficos, reflexiona sobre las relaciones entre el arte y la vida, el paso del tiempo y la muerte, y explora en profundidad el interior de los personajes y las complejas relaciones que mantienen entre si."

This definitive edition offers hundreds of pages of critical apparatus, including a history of composition, explanatory notes and textual variants.