Room of One's Own

Description: "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"--

Review Quotes: "Brilliant, incandescent . . . Woolf makes an impossibly elegant argument about the myriad ways that women's voices have been silenced, suppressed, and otherwise forgotten. . . . Do not let this volume sit on your shelves unread. Make this beautiful Penguin Classics edition more than a totem to your values, or a lovely marker of how far we all have come. It is so much more: It is an active, breathing rallying cry. It is an enduring font for dialogue, discussion, and debate. And it holds in its pages the soul of a woman who demanded, and inspires us to demand, our full liberation." --Xochitl Gonzalez, from the Introduction