Based on 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.

A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One’s Own is essential reading for those wishing to understand the progress that has been made in women’s rights and the struggles that still lie ahead.