Virginia Woolf remains one of the most widely read and celebrated writers of the 20th century, with To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway regularly appearing near the top of lists of the greatest novels of all time. Yet not all of her books are so well remembered.

Woolf’s second novel, Night and Day, published in 1919, is often seen as an anomaly. Unlike her more famous books, it has a realist, almost Victorian style and a slow, languorous plot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is one of the least read of Woolf’s works (compare the 366,000 Goodreads ratings for Mrs Dalloway to the 10,000 for Night and Day).

What is surprising is that it has just been adapted for the big screen – the first major adaptation of any Woolf novel in decades.

Night and Day is set around 1911 and focuses on the complicated love lives of four young Londoners. The novel follows Katharine Hilbery, who lives in the shadow of her famous poet grandfather and secretly longs to be a mathematician (a profession closed to her due to her gender). It also introduces William Rodney, her fiance, a pretentious government official and aspiring literary critic, and Ralph Denham, a lower-middle-class lawyer also in love with Katharine but who can’t bring himself to tell her directly. And finally, Mary Datchet, a suffrage campaigner who feels an affection for Ralph that deepens over the course of the novel.

On its publication, it received a shaky reception. Novelist and fellow........

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