Podcasts History In Our Time A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own

Published: April 27, 2023, 9:15 a.m.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf's highly influential essay on women and literature, which considers both literary history and future opportunity.

In 1928 Woolf gave two lectures at Cambridge University about women and fiction. In front of an audience at Newnham College, she delivered the following words: \\u201cAll I could do was offer you an opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved\\u201d.

These lectures formed the basis of a book she published the following year, and Woolf chose A Room Of One\\u2019s Own for its title. It is a text that set the scene for the study of women\\u2019s writing for the rest of the 20th century. Arguably, it initiated the discipline of women\\u2019s history too.

With

Hermione Lee\\nEmeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford

Michele Barrett \\nEmeritus Professor of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary, University of London

and

Alexandra Harris\\nProfessor of English at the University of Birmingham

Producer Luke Mulhall

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