A Room Of One’s Own

A Room of One’s Own is for everyone who has ever wondered why it is that women are largely absent from the history books, unless they are queens, mothers or mistresses.

Imagine that William Shakespeare had a sister, as wonderfully gifted as himself. ‘But she was not sent to school.:. had no chance of learning grammar and logic… Before she was out of her teens she was to be betrothed … she cried out that marriage was hateful and was beaten by her father… She took the road to London… stood at the stage door; she wanted to act. Men laughed in her face… At last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child … and killed herself one winter’s night..!’

In 1928 Virginia Woolf read two papers to the women students of Cambridge. She wished to share with them the ideas that had led her to conclude: ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ A Room of One’s Own is the result. It is feminism infused with humour and subtlety, and optimism for what the liberated mind can accomplish.