Virginia Woolf’s pioneering work of feminism, “probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in [the twentieth] century” (Hermione Lee), featuring a new introduction by Xochitl Gonzalez, Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last
A Penguin ClassicIn October 1928, Virginia Woolf delivered two lectures to the women’s colleges at the University of Cambridge, arguing with inimitable wit and rhetorical mastery that an income and a room of one’s own are essential to a woman’s creative freedom. These lectures became the basis for
A Room of One’s Own, a landmark in feminist thought,
in which Woolf imagines the fictional Judith Shakespeare, sister to William and equally gifted but lost to history. How much genius has gone unexpressed, Woolf wonders, because women are not afforded the same privileges as men? A hundred years later, her brilliant polemic reverberates into our own time.
In this edition, Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and bestselling novelist Xochitl Gonzalez contributes an introductory essay that extends the argument to Woolf’s housekeeper, breaking down divides of not only gender but also race and class in order to include
all women in Woolf’s profoundly inspiring call to realize their creative potential.
"In October 1928, Virginia Woolf delivered a series of lectures to the two women's colleges at Cambridge University, and the result was thus: A Room of One's Own, an extended essay that outlines the limitations on women throughout history and in her own time. Through a series of metaphors, scenarios, and analysis of her literary predecessors-which includes a powerful thought experiment about a fictional sister of William Shakespeare and musings on female writers such as the Bronte sisters-Woolf argues that women need a literal and figurative personal space to make their mark on a society dominated by men. In doing so, she urges us to consider the ways in which we continue to be constrained by our material and societal circumstances today, at a time when these discrepancies are recognized as even more multifaceted than in Woolf's era"--
