A Room of Ones Own

Widely acknowledged as a pioneering text of the women smovement, A Room of One s Own is one of VirginiaWoolf s most influential works. Couched in entertainingfiction, this book–length essay investigates both the patriarchalrealities of the present day, and history of discrimination againstwomen and the stifling effect of such prejudice on women screativity. The prescient concluding words of the dust jacket ofthe first British edition (which in all probability were written bythe author herself) state that: an attempt is made... to forecast what effect comparative freedom andindependence will have upon women s artistic work in thefuture.  

The first comprehensive and authoritative edition of thisfoundational text of the feminist movement, and one of the mostsignificant works in her own canon, this timely and important newedition of Virginia Woolf s A Room of One s Ownadopts the complete text of the first British edition published inLondon on October 24, 1929. Additional features include acomprehensive introduction detailing the process and composition ofWoolf s original essay and the evolution of its subsequentpublication history. Extensive explanatory notes add furtherillumination by revealing the essay s broader political,historical, social, and literary contexts. A comprehensive appendixalso highlights variations between each of the British editionsthat appeared in Woolf s lifetime and the first Americanedition, alterations made in the first British edition fromWoolf s uncorrected proofs, and current editorial emendationsincorporated in this new edition.

Acknowledgements viii

Abbreviations ix

Frontispiece: the dust–jacket for the first English editionxi

Introduction xii

A ROOM OF ONE S OWN 1

Notes 83

Appendix: Textual Variants and Emendations 125

David Bradshaw is Professor of English Literature atOxford University and a Fellow of Worcester College. His editedworks include The Hidden Huxley (1994), A ConciseCompanion to Modernism (2003), The Cambridge Companion toE.M. Forster (2007), A Companion to Modernist Literature andCulture (with Kevin J.H. Dettmar, 2006), Prudes on theProwl: Fiction and Obscenity in England, 1850 to the PresentDay (with Rachel Potter, 2013), and Woolf s MrsDalloway (2000), To the Lighthouse (2006), and TheWaves (2014), as well as many other Modernist texts. He hasalso edited the Shakespeare Head edition of The Years (withIan Blyth, 2012) and is Co–Executive Editor of the 42–volume TheComplete Works of Evelyn Waugh (with Martin Stannard,forthcoming).

Stuart N. Clarke has transcribed and edited VirginiaWoolf s Orlando: The Original Holograph Draft (1993);was co–compiler with B. J. Kirkpatrick of the 4th edition of ABibliography of Virginia Woolf (1997); and editedTranslations from the Russian (2006), by Virginia Woolf andS. S. Koteliansky, and Volumes 5 and 6 of the complete Essays ofVirginia Woolf (2009 and 2011). He is a founding member of theVirginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and has edited its journal,the Virginia Woolf Bulletin, since its inception in1999.