To the Lighthouse is set on the Isle of Skye, an island in the Hebrides archipelago off the coast of Scotland, in the beginning of the 20th century. The novel spans a decade between 1910 and 1920, during which the Ramsay family periodically visits their summer house on the island. For the location of Skye and the context of the Ramsay’s visits, Woolf drew heavily on her own childhood in Cornwall, England, where her family would rent a summer house.
A major feature of this seaside setting is the titular Lighthouse, which sits on an island off the coast and is unreachable except by boat. The novel opens with James Ramsay expressing his desire to sail to the Lighthouse at the very beginning of the book and only at the very end does he make landfall with his sister Cam and father Mr. Ramsay.
The bulk of the story, the first and third sections, take place over two short stretches of time, 10 years apart. The middle section, "Time Passes," moves rapidly through the intervening decade and contextualizes the narrative within real historical time: this decade sees the advent and eventual conclusion of World War I—the war in which Andrew Ramsay, another child of in the Ramsay Family, is killed. Over the course of these years, the Ramsay residence on Skye falls into neglect and disrepair, and the Ramsays do not return until the final "Lighthouse" section.
