A Room of One's Own: Virginia Woolf (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Woolf, Virginia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141183535 ISBN 13: 9780141183534

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2002

Synopsis

Collecting two book-length essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf's most powerful feminist writing, justifying the need for women to possess intellectual freedom and financial independence. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Michele Barrett.

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Carlotte Brontė to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity.
Three Guineas was published almost a decade later and breaks new ground in its discussion of men, militarism and women's attitudes towards war. These two pieces reveal Virginia Woolf's fiery spirit and sophisticated wit, and confirm her status as a highly inspirational essayist.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay.

If you enjoyed A Room of One's Own, you might like Woolf's Orlando, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century'
Hermione Lee, Financial Times

About this title

Review:

Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century (Hermione Lee Financial Times)

Book Description:

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14–18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0141183535
• ISBN 13: 9780141183534
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112