Virginia Woolf's playful exploration of a satirical »Oxbridge« became one of the world's most groundbreaking writings on women, writing, fiction, and gender. A Room of One's Own [1929] can be read as one or as six different essays, narrated from an intimate first-person perspective. Actual history blends with narrative and memoir. But perhaps most revolutionary was its address: the book is written by a woman for women. Male readers are compelled to read through women's eyes in a total inversion of the traditional male gaze. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.
Beginning in 1611 with the King James Bible and ending in 2014 with Elizabeth Kolbert's 'The Sixth Extinction', this extraordinary voyage through the written treasures of our culture examines universally-acclaimed classics such as Pepys' 'Diaries', Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of Species', Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and a whole host of additional works --
A Room of One's Own is a very clear example of how creative thinkers connect and present things in novel ways. Based on the text of a talk given by Virginia Woolf at an all-female Cambridge college, Room considers the subject of 'women and fiction.' Woolf’s approach is to ask why, in the early 20th century, literary history presented so few examples of canonically 'great' women writers. The common prejudices of the time suggested this was caused by (and proof of) women's creative and intellectual inferiority to men. Woolf argued instead that it was to do with a very simple fact: across the centuries, male-dominated society had systematically prevented women from having the educational opportunities, private spaces and economic independence to produce great art. At a time when 'art' was commonly considered to be a province of the mind that had no relation to economic circumstances, this was a novel proposal. More novel, though, was Woolf's manner of arguing and proving her contentions: through a fictional account of the limits placed on even the most privileged women in everyday existence. An impressive early example of cultural materialism, A Room of One's Own is an exemplary encapsulation of creative thinking.
Through close readings of Woolf's essays, including 'Montaigne', A Room of One's Own, 'Craftsmanship', Three Guineas, and 'Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid', Allen shows how Woolf's politics, expressed and enacted by her writings, are relevant to our curr
Virginia Woolf. The third chapter of Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own," based on two lectures the author gave to female students at Cambridge in 1928 on the topic of women and fiction. 36 pages. Tale Blazers.
Meet the women who wrote. They wrote against all odds. Some wrote defiantly; some wrote desperately. Some wrote while trapped within the confines of status and wealth. Some wrote hand-to-mouth in abject poverty. Some wrote trapped in a room of their father’s house, and some went in search of a room of their own. They had lovers and families. They were sometimes lonely. Many wrote anonymously or under a pseudonym for a world not yet ready for their genius and talent. We know many of their names—Austen and Alcott, Brontë and Browning, Wheatley and Woolf—though some may be less familiar. They are here, waiting to introduce themselves. They marched through the world one by one or in small sisterhoods, speaking to each other and to us over distances of place and time. Pushing back against the boundaries meant to keep us in our place, they carved enough space for themselves to write. They made space for us to follow. Here they are gathered together, an army of women who wrote and an arsenal of words to inspire us. They walk with us as we forge our own paths forward. These women wrote to change the world. The perfect keepsake gift for the reader in your life Anthology of stories and poems Book length: approximately 90,000 words
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD In 1960, Harvard’s sister college, Radcliffe, announced the founding of an Institute for Independent Study, a “messy experiment” in women’s education that offered paid fellowships to those with a PhD or “the equivalent” in artistic achievement. Five of the women who received fellowships—poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen—quickly formed deep bonds with one another that would inspire and sustain their most ambitious work. They called themselves “the Equivalents.” Drawing from notebooks, letters, recordings, journals, poetry, and prose, Maggie Doherty weaves a moving narrative of friendship and ambition, art and activism, love and heartbreak, and shows how the institute spoke to the condition of women on the cusp of liberation. “Rich and powerful. . . . A love story about art and female friendship.” —Harper’s Magazine “Reads like a novel, and an intense one at that. . . . The Equivalents is an observant, thoughtful and energetic account.” —Margaret Atwood, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A “beautifully written” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) memoir-manifesto from the first female director of the National Science Foundation about the entrenched sexism in science, the elaborate detours women have take to bypass the problem, and how to fix the system. If you think sexism thrives only on Wall Street or Hollywood, you haven’t visited a lab, a science department, a research foundation, or a biotech firm. Rita Colwell is one of the top scientists in America: the groundbreaking microbiologist who discovered how cholera survives between epidemics and the former head of the National Science Foundation. But when she first applied for a graduate fellowship in bacteriology, she was told, “We don’t waste fellowships on women.” A lack of support from some male superiors would lead her to change her area of study six times before completing her PhD. A Lab of One’s Own is an “engaging” (Booklist) book that documents all Colwell has seen and heard over her six decades in science, from sexual harassment in the lab to obscure systems blocking women from leading professional organizations or publishing their work. Along the way, she encounters other women pushing back against the status quo, including a group at MIT who revolt when they discover their labs are a fraction of the size of their male colleagues. Resistance gave female scientists special gifts: forced to change specialties so many times, they came to see things in a more interdisciplinary way, which turned out to be key to making new discoveries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Colwell would also witness the advances that could be made when men and women worked together—often under her direction, such as when she headed a team that helped to uncover the source of anthrax used in the 2001 letter attacks. A Lab of One’s Own is “an inspiring read for women embarking on a career or experiencing career challenges” (Library Journal, starred review) that shares the sheer joy a scientist feels when moving toward a breakthrough, and the thrill of uncovering a whole new generation of female pioneers. It is the science book for the #MeToo era, offering an astute diagnosis of how to fix the problem of sexism in science—and a celebration of women pushing back.
First delivered as a speech to schoolgirls in Kent in 1926, this enchanting short essay by the towering Modernist writer Virginia Woolf celebrates the importance of the written word. With a measured but ardent tone, Woolf weaves together thought and quote, verse and prose into a moving tract on the power literature can have over its reader, in a way which still resounds with truth today. I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.”
