• Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own is often considered one of the most significant works of feminine literary criticism ever written. The essay is based on a series of lectures she delivered in 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University.

• Fast Facts

  1. Author: Virginia Woolf
  2. Publication Date: October 24, 1929
  3. Current Publisher: Harvest Books
  4. Pages: 132
  5. ISBN 0156787334
  6. Sales: A signed limited edition of 600 copies sold out by November 19, 1929. Between 10,000 and 11,000 copies sold in the first five months
  7. Themes: history, education, and writing of women in England
  8. Setting: Oxbridge - a fictional blend of Oxford and Cambridge
  9. Adaptations: 1991 play adapted by Patrick Garland starring Eileen Atkins.
  10. MLA Bibliography listed 68 articles about A Room of One's Own published between 1980 and 1997
  11. Sequel: Three Guineas 1938
  12. Famous Quotation: "Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting man as twice his natural size."

• Synopsis

  The central focus of the essay is that "a woman must have money and a room of her own" if she is to create works of art. Within the essay Woolf imagines the possibility that William Shakespeare had a sister named Judith, and because of her status as a woman, she was denied the opportunity to indulge in the same creative endeavors that her brother was allowed. She reviews the denial of women to seek equal education, claiming that education itself is a patriarchal institution designed to keep women out. Woolf then reviews the careers of several female authors including: Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontë Sisters and George Eliot, and examines whether women are capable of producing literary works of highest order.

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Virginia Woolf | To the Lighthouse | Orlando Feminism | E.M. Forster | Olive Kitteridge

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