‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’

With this provocative contention Virginia Woolf, author of such distinguished novels as The Waves and To the Lighthouse, set out in 1929 to discuss the problems of the woman writer. In an era when women were only admitted to college libraries if suitably escorted or provided with letters of introduction, these problems were legion. But her wit and well-informed optimism prevail, although she may, and does, rail mightily against stupidity and prejudice. Her crusading spirit, revealed throughout, shows nowhere more clearly than in this declaration: ‘Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock; no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’

‘This witty and urbane book is a clearing house of ideas. It is simply packed with ideas of every sort, though they are most skilfully arranged to illustrate the central theme…. How much of life, and literature, and good society, and philosophy, is packed into these hundred and seventy pages’ – Professor Bernard Blackstone