Short answers, pulled from the story.
To the Lighthouse was published in May 1927 by Hogarth Press, the independent publishing house run by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. The first edition was printed in 3,000 copies with a dust cover designed by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.
To the Lighthouse follows the Ramsay family across two visits to their summer house on the Isle of Skye between 1910 and 1920, separated by the First World War. The novel traces tensions within the family, the death of Mrs Ramsay, and the eventual completion of both a long-delayed lighthouse journey and a painting by the guest Lily Briscoe.
To the Lighthouse is cited as a key example of multiple focalisation, in which the narrative shifts between the interior perspectives of different characters, sometimes mid-sentence. Woolf's method uses lyrical paraphrases rather than the abrupt fragments associated with James Joyce's stream of consciousness.
Woolf drew heavily on her own family history when writing the novel. Her father Leslie Stephen rented Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, from 1882; her mother's death when Woolf was thirteen inspired Mrs Ramsay's fate; and her brother Adrian's refused trip to Godrevy Lighthouse parallels James Ramsay's cancelled visit in the book.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked To the Lighthouse number 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century. Time magazine included it on its 2005 list of the hundred best English-language novels since 1923. The novel's early success also contributed to Woolf winning the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse prize in 1928.
Adaptations include a 1983 telefilm starring Rosemary Harris, Michael Gough, and Kenneth Branagh; a BBC Radio 4 audio drama adapted by Eileen Atkins in 2000 with Vanessa Redgrave and Juliet Stevenson; and a 2017 opera composed by Zesses Seglias with a libretto by Ernst Marianne Binder that premiered at the Bregenz Festival.