Summary

Chapter 1 opens with a third-person narrator describing Katherine Hilbery, a well-to-do woman in her twenties as she serves tea at a party her family is hosting in their drawing room. As she proceeds mindlessly with her tasks, she contemplates what outsiders looking in on this scene may think of the people inside the house. Ralph Denham, a man in his late twenties, enters the room full of people, and Katherine and Denham engage in separate conversations while a novelist, Mr. Fortescue, speaks to the room in an exhaustive manner. Katherine and Denham are brought together in conversation by Katherine’s mother, Mrs. Hilbery, who makes mention of a cousin of theirs who has gone to live in Manchester. Having ended his speech, Mr. Fortescue chimes in with his own evaluation of living in Manchester and continues to speak for a very long time...