In this influential extended essay, Virginia Woolf outlined what women need in order to fully make use of their abilities. Using powerful images and memorable thought experiments--such as a fictional sister of William Shakespeare, who is as talented as her brother but limited in ways he was not--Woolf analyzes the many ways in which women have been held back throughout history and still are in her own time. First published in 1929, A Room of One's Own has been a towering and inspirational statement of feminist principles for nearly a century--and remains relevant now, at a time of growing awareness of the kind of social injustices that she decried.