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A Room of One's Own

Brief Description
Virginia Woolf's pioneering work of feminism is "probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in the twentieth century" (Hermione Lee). This edition features a new introduction by Xochitl Gonzalez, Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$4800

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Virginia Woolf's pioneering work of feminism is "probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in the twentieth century" (Hermione Lee). This edition features 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 two lectures to the women's colleges at the University of Cambridge, arguing with inimitable wit and rhetorical mastery that an income and a room of one's own are essential to a woman's creative freedom. These lectures became the basis for A Room of One's Own, a landmark in feminist thought, in which Woolf imagines the fictional Judith Shakespeare, sister to William and equally gifted but lost to history. How much genius has gone unexpressed, Woolf wonders, because women are not afforded the same privileges as men? A hundred years later, her brilliant polemic reverberates into our own time.

In this edition, Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and bestselling novelist Xochitl Gonzalez contributes an introductory essay that extends the argument to Woolf's housekeeper, breaking down divides of not only gender but also race and class in order to include all women in Woolf's profoundly inspiring call to realise their creative potential.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780143138907

Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 08 July 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Contributors:

  • Edited by MichΓ¨le Barrett
  • Notes by MichΓ¨le Barrett
  • Introduction by Xochitl Gonzalez

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 10.0mm

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 195.0mm

Weight: 113g

Pages: 144

About the Author

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the great twentieth-century authors, was at the center of the Bloomsbury Group and is a major figure in the history of literary feminism and modernism. She published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915, and between 1925 and 1931 produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism, and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and the passionate feminist essay A Room of One's Own (1929). Xochitl Gonzalez (introduction) is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olga Dies Dreaming and the Reese's Book Club pick Anita de Monte Laughs Last. She was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her essays in The Atlantic. Mich le Barrett (editor, notes) is Professor Emerita of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of Virginia Woolf- Women and Writing and Women's Oppression Today.

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