A Room of One's Own

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941), one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, transformed the art of fiction. The author of numerous novels and short stories, she was also an acknowleged master of the essay form, and an admired literary critic.


FROM THE FOREWORD BY PHILIP DOSSICK



A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf, has long been recognized as a landmark feminist essay.  It was based upon two college lectures Woolf gave in 1928, after she had been asked to speak on the topic of Women and Fiction. 


She argued that because so many women lacked freedom and education, they were hopelessly inhibited in their lives, deprived of the necessary settings for their innate genius to flow. In short, they had been abused and dominated by men for centuries. 


“Lock up your libraries if you like;” she writes, “but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” 

 

She posited that the truest emancipation of women would only occur when they became appropriately independent, freed from financial, and cultural restrictions—to transcend the narrow sexual roles society had cast them in." 


A Room of One's Own is, in sum, a brilliantly perceptive and pioneering essay on women and fiction, written by one of the twentieth century's most challenging thinkers, a woman who justly succeeded in creating a room of her own—in the pantheon of modern English literature.

PHILIP DOSSICK