But, you may say, we asked you to put together an anthology of short stories — what has that got to do with ‘A Room of One’s Own’? When I was thirteen and I first picked ‘Una Stanza Tutta Per Sé’ (as it’s translated in Italian, in which I read it), Woolf’s seminal essay did not read as an essay, it read as a story. Alive with details, despite the static promise of its title, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ follows the journey of the “I” (“a convenient term for somebody who has no real being”) wherever she is allowed, and beyond. It’s not a paper about women and fiction; it’s the epic tale of women and fiction. As such I remembered it, years later, when I first set foot in Woolf’s imaginary “Oxbridge”. Like her “I”, I quickly found all the places I could not go, the grass I could not walk on, the books I could not read; granted, because I was a 16-year-old Italian tourist with hardly any English, and not because — like Woolf’s “I” — “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction”; still, a closed door is a closed door, and it feels like one.
Based on two lectures delivered by Woolf at Newnham and Girton colleges, first published in 1929 by the Hogarth Press. Now widely available, including as a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Feminism Short Edition
A Personal Anthology 