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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Penguin Classics
05 August 2025
Virginia Woolf's pioneering work of feminism, ""probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in

the twentieth

century"" (Hermione Lee), featuring 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

Virginia Woolf's pioneering work of feminism, ""probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in

the twentieth

century"" (Hermione Lee), featuring 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 realize their creative potential.
By:  
Notes by:  
Introduction by:  
Edited by:  
Imprint:   Penguin Classics
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 129mm,  Spine: 10mm
Weight:   132g
ISBN:   9780143138907
ISBN 10:   0143138901
Pages:   144
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

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.

Reviews for A Room of One's Own

“Brilliant, incandescent . . . Woolf makes an impossibly elegant argument about the myriad ways that women’s voices have been silenced, suppressed, and otherwise forgotten. . . . Do not let this volume sit on your shelves unread. Make this beautiful Penguin Classics edition more than a totem to your values, or a lovely marker of how far we all have come. It is so much more: It is an active, breathing rallying cry. It is an enduring font for dialogue, discussion, and debate. And it holds in its pages the soul of a woman who demanded, and inspires us to demand, our full liberation.” —Xochitl Gonzalez, from the Introduction


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