Books

First Printing, trade issue, one of 4,000 copies. Octavo (19.5cm); navy blue cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; [vi],199,[3]pp. Spine gently sunned, gilt beginning to oxidize, with two small, faint stains to lower front cover; contents clean; Very Good+. In a later dustjacket designed by Vanessa Bell, priced $2.00 on front flap; modest sunning to spine and panels, moderate overall wear, with numerous tears and attendant creases; losses to spine ends and corners, including a larger loss (affecting some text) at lower left corner of front flap; old tape repairs to spine panel on verso, with both flaps neatly re-attached; a Good example, not without some shelf appeal. An extended essay by Woolf, based on two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October, 1928, in which she discusses at length the barriers which hinder women's free expression. "Women - asks Mrs. Woolf - what is the truth about their nature? Why have men always had power and wealth and influence and fame - while women had nothing but children? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art? What effect has poverty on works of art? Women - Mrs. Woolf decides - having a rather ignominious and subservient past, have their creative lives before them - provided they can find the first two keys to freedom - fixed incomes and rooms of their own" (from front flap). A major feminist statement. KIRKPATRICK A12c.

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at the University of Cambridge. In this essay, Woolf addresses the limitations and prejudices that affect women writers and the conditions necessary for their creative work. The book is noted for its famous dictum, 'A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.'