A Room of One's Own is Virginia Woolf's most powerful feminist essay, justifying the need for women to have intellectual freedom and financial independence. Based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, the essay stands as one of the great feminist polemics, covering topics from Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë to the silent fate of Shakespeare's (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual repression on female creativity.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is considered a major writer and essayist of the 20th century, a central figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and a member of "The Bloomsbury Group". Between 1925 and 1931, Woolf produced what is now regarded as her best masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an impressive production of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism, and biography, including the playful and subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929).

If you liked A Room of One's Own, you might also enjoy Woolf's Orlando, also available in modern Penguin Classics editions.