A room of one's own

Based on two lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, 'A Room of One's Own' is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition.

As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women's literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare's.