大象传媒

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: 鈥淎ll 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鈥�.

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

With

Hermione Lee
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford

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

and

Alexandra Harris
Professor of English at the University of Birmingham

Producer Luke Mulhall