The book is a fascinating look at fiction, the female author, and what's necessary to write well. While some of her arguments might seem untrue, they always warrant consideration. I was surprised to find her prose accessible, her personality evident and embracing no matter how fervently she agued. A book worthy of reading by any reader or writer. ( )

Virginia Woolf was one of the first feminists of all time. She was one of the first women to speak up and voice her opinion about how women are equal to men. She emphasized the fact that women are treated unequally in society and this is why they have produced less impressive works of art and literature than men. Most famous works of literature were written by men because women never had the freedom to express their ideas. Woolf urged that there would be female Shakespeare's in the future, when woman can find fixed incomes and rooms of their own; the two keys to freedom. Because women do not have power, their creativity was ignored throughout history. When someone has a room of one's own, they have nothing to hold them back from expressing their feelings and ideas. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. It is there that a woman may allow herself to open her imagination to create beautiful works of art.

I highly recommend this book because it is a great book and Woolf is an amazing argumentative writer. ( )

I finished A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf this morning.

my thoughts and comments:

What a lovely book. It is an essay on why men were always more intelligent than women; on why men were always better writers than women; on why men wrote and women didn't; on why men were educated and women were not; on why one could not be an author if one or one's family did not have money; on why one could not be successfully as a writer unless one had the privacy in which to write.
It sounds so cold and calculated and statistical. However I found it to be a very warm and inviting read. I have never read Virginia Woolf previously. But I love her writing. She is a very lyrical and honest writer, she doesn't hold back nor pull punches and I hope that she has a novel out there somewhere that I can find and read. In the notes at the back of my copy it only listed essays and critiques she had written. I don't know, but I would imagine that Virginia Woolf was a fascinating woman. ( )

This is either a very long speech or a very short book. Either way, it's an interesting collection of arguments that women couldn't really make substantial contributions to literature until the 19th and 20th centuries, when they began to acquire space and money, which Woolf sees as far more important than political achievements like suffrage. I find some of her literary analysis of Shakespeare, Austen, and the Brontes problematic, but that doesn't undermine the importance of the argument she makes here. An important early work of feminist criticism-- so important, in fact, that while reading this I really felt like I knew much of it already.

Virginia Woolf is never easy to read, but I found this slim volume especially difficult. Originally written as two papers to be read to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton, the papers were too long to be read in full and were then altered and expanded into book form.

Within its 125 pages Woolf explored her opinions on the impediments to women who want to write coming up with her famous conclusion that women need a room of their own and a less famous parallel conclusion that she also needs an income of 500 pounds per year.

If one has the patience to wade through Woolf's dense prose you'll find this book one of the early modern feminist tracts. You ill also have some surprises. For example, she talks about how she receive the news of a legacy from an old aunt (the proverbial 500 pound/year) on the same day that women in England were granted the right to vote. An she says, Of the two - the vote sand the money - the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important. Personally, I was very pleased to see this practical side of her personality.

I would put this volume in the "it's good for you" category. Some things you just have to read because they're there ( )