Virginia Woolf, the author of A Room of One's Own.

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published in 1929, it was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in 1928.

The essay examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare, amongst other topics. In one section, Woolf invented a fictional "Shakespeare's Sister", Judith, to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women. Woolf also examines the careers of several female authors, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and George Eliot. The author subtly refers to several of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name for the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge—Oxbridge—has become a well-known term in English satire, although she was not the first to use it.

The title comes from Woolf's conception that, 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction' (chapter 1). It also refers to any author's need for poetic license and the personal liberty to create art.

A Room of One's Own is written with supreme irony and sarcasm over the power-balance between men and women.

Plays, Film and Television adaptations

It was adapted as a play by Patrick Garland who also directed Eileen Atkins in its stage performance. Their television adaptation was broadcast on PBS Masterpiece Theatre in 1991.

External links

• Online edition
• A Room of One's Own at the Internet Movie Database

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