A Room of One's Own

by Virginia Woolf

"But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain." So begins what is widely regarded as the foundation text of feminist literary criticism, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Probably Woolf's most readable and entertaining book, it was based on papers delivered at Newnham and Girton Colleges—the two women's colleges at Cambridge University. Never losing sight of her undergraduate audience, Woolf provides a...