A Room of One's Own

<p><i>A Room of One's Own </i>is Virginia Woolf's most powerful feminist essay justifying the need for women to possess intellectual freedom and financial independence. <br><br>Based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge the essay is one of the great feminist polemics ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Carlotte Bront&#235; to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity.<br><br>Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major twentieth-century author and essayist a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. Between 1925 and 1931 Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces from <i>Mrs Dalloway</i> (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel <i>The Waves</i> (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism short fiction journalism and biography including the playfully subversive <i>Orlando</i> (1928) and <i>A Room of One's Own</i> (1929).<br><br>If you enjoyed <i>A Room of One's Own</i> you might like Woolf's <i>Orlando</i> also available in Penguin Modern Classics.<br><br>'Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century'<br>Hermione Lee <i>Financial Times</i></p>