Known for her novels, and for the dubious fame of being a doyenne of the
'Bloomsbury Set', in her time Virginia Woolf was highly respected as a
major essayist and critic with a special interest and commitment to
contemporary literature, and women's writing in particular. This
spectacular collection of essays and other writings does justice to those
efforts, offering unique appraisals of Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, the
Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Richardson, Charlotte Bronte, and Katherine
Mansfield, amongst many others. Gathered too, and using previously
unpublished (sometimes even unsigned) journal extracts, are what will now
become timeless commentaries on 'Women and Fiction', 'Professions for
Women' and 'The Intellectual Status of Women'. More than half a century
after the publication of A Room Of One's Own, distinguished scholar Michele
Barrett cohesively brings together work which, throughout the years, has
been scattered throughout many texts and many volumes. . . affording these
very valuable writings the collective distinction they deserve at last.