Introduction

In A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf asserts that some of the most interesting and intellectual characters in literature have been women. However, off the printed page, women have primarily played second-class roles, kept in place by men determined to dominate them. Women have long been denied access to education and have historically been denied the personal rights and leisure time that are the precondition of creative writing. Addressing her audience in 1929, she notes that authors such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters have made important contributions to literature, but much remains to be done. Woolf famously insists that creative works require freedom, both financial and intellectual; a woman must have independent means (at least five hundred pounds a year, a large sum at the time...