Virginia Woolf 's childhood, punctuated by long visits to Cornwall each summer, was characterised by certain contrasts and juxtapositions: between urban and rural, movement and belonging, past and future, domesticity and the outdoor landscape. These influences are evident in her work in various ways: particularly through a balance between nostalgic reflection and an acceptance of the inexorable transience of human existence and sensation. As To the Lighthouse demonstrates, Woolf 's imaginative sensibility is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences within a coastal environment. She is also interested in the ways in which new developments in travel and technology can defamiliarise us to the world, and reveal interconnections with other beings and things. This is seen, for example, in her exploration of temporality: Woolf 's attentiveness to the sedimentary layering of the past within rural landscapes is applied to her reimagining of the urban environment in Mrs Dalloway and other works. The urban-rural dynamic of her childhood is maintained throughout her writing life in a steadfast focus on the character of place, and the development of descriptive modes that demonstrate the influence of both metropolitan life and the landscapes of southern England. While Woolf 's rural places are often the site of marginalised communities and identities normally associated with urban cosmopolitanism, her evocations of the city draw upon richly sensual language and pastoral associations. The metropolitan world is also portrayed as a site within which both fragmentation and interconnection – modes of being which are not mutually exclusive, for Woolf – are made explicit. That sense of interconnection extends to nonhuman animals in Between the Acts, a novel which emphasises our shared sensory and communicative experiences. Ultimately, this portrayal of a world in which all experience and activity is part of a ‘work of art’ underlies the theme of unity in Woolf 's final novel…