A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1929. First printing. Near fine in very good jacket.. First edition of one of the most influential literary essays of the twentieth century. In 1928, Woolf delivered two lectures about women and fiction at the Cambridge women's colleges Newnham and Girton, lectures which she expanded into A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN the following year. In surveying the careers of novelists like Jane Austen and George Eliot, Woolf considers the conditions necessary to create art and outlines the limitations of the literal and metaphorical spaces in which women writers have had to work. Playing with the idea of Shakespeare's sister, whose talents could not have found similar expression in her time, Woolf predicts that a woman writer the equal of Shakespeare will emerge under the right conditions. Constantly referenced, this book has become a modern touchstone. 7'' x 4.5''. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt. In original light pink pictorial dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell. 172 pages. Offsetting to endpapers as common. Jacket with small chips at spine ends and corners, a few closed tears almost invisibly repaired with archival tissue to verso. Interior clean. Shows well.