A Room of One's Own

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 Classic

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.