In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular ‘room of one’s own’, prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential. As relevant in its insight and indignation today as it was when first delivered in those hallowed lecture theatres, A Room of One’s Own remains both a beautiful work of literature and an incisive analysis of women and their place in the world.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf features an afterword by the British art historian Frances Spalding.

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, the youngest daughter of the Victorian writer Sir Leslie Stephen. She was educated at home with her sister, Vanessa, in a literary environment. The death of Woolf’s mother in 1895 and her father in 1904 led to the first of the serious nervous breakdowns that would come to feature heavily in her life. Shortly afterwards she moved with her sister and two of her brothers to 46 Gordon Square, which was to be the first meeting place of the circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, with whom she would later establish the Hogarth Press, and also published her first novel, The Voyage Out. It would be followed by eight others, including Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), which together establish her position as one of the most important modernists of the twentieth century. Woolf committed suicide in 1941.