A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. Three Guineas was published almost a decade later and breaks new ground in its discussion of men, militarism and women's attitudes towards war. These two pieces reveal Virginia Woolf's fiery spirit and sophisticated wit and confirm her status as a highly inspirational essayist.
On My Bookshelf by Philippa Gregory...
This was recommended to me when I was 23. I remember taking it on a camping holiday and reading it while blowing up the airbed with a foot pump! Woolf says women can’t be expected to work creatively when they have no resources. I felt she explained in a logical way why women’s creativity is not more successful. I gave it to my daughter, because it’s such a powerful read and I wanted to pass that on to her. Philippa Gregory's new book, The White Queen, is out now.
'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?'
A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928 and became a landmark work of feminist thought.
Covering everything from why a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write, to authors such as Jane Austen, Aphra Behn and the Brontë sisters, and the tragic story of Shakespeare's fictional sister Judith, it remains a passionate assertion for female creativity and independence in a world dominated by men.