About The Book

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. A Room of One’s Own, among Virginia Woolf’s best- known works, is an extended essay, based on two lectures that she delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women’s constituent colleges at the University of Cambridge. First published in September 1929 as a book, this seminal feminist text makes a case for a literal and figurative space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men. Woolf feels strongly that the argument that women produce inferior works of literature must be analysed against the backdrop of their existence and circumstances—unlike men, historically and socially, women are denied the time, space and economic independence to produce artistic and creative works. Nearly a century after the publication of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s observation still seems to ring true.

About Virginia Woolf

Born on 25 January 1882, Virginia Woolf was one of the most influential modernist 20th-century English writers, notable for using stream of consciousness as a literary technique in her works. While writing anonymous reviews for journals, she resolved to ‘re-form’ the novel by experimenting with dreams and delirium. Her novel Melymbrosia, which she completed in 1912 was born out of this determination. Recast and published in 1915 as The Voyage Out, it was about a young woman’s journey of selfdiscovery on her father’s ship in South America. Later, she modelled many of her characters on real-life associates and acquaintances.
At the onset of 1924, the Woolfs moved their residence from the suburbs back to Bloomsbury, where a relationship blossomed between the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West and Virginia. With Sackville-West, she learned to face her anxieties and overcome her nervous ailments. In fact, Orlando, a fantastical biography is partly a portrait of Vita Sackville-West.
One of the most important chapters in her early life was the summer home the family visited in St Ives, Cornwall, where she first beheld the Godrevy Lighthouse. To the Lighthouse (1927) is, therefore, considered one of her most autobiographical novels. Apart from her extremely popular extended essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929), her other seminal works include-Mrs Dalloway (1925), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931).
In 1941, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a river, aged 59. Her last work, Between the Acts, was posthumously published later that year.
Other Books By Virginia Woolf

About The Book

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment. Jules Verne’s around the world in 80 days (1873) is the story of Phileas Fogg, an affluent English gentleman who leads a solitary life. Though Fogg doesn’t boast of a vibrant social life, he is a member of the reform club. After reading an article in the daily Telegraph about the opening of a new Railway section in India, which promises to make travel around the world possible in 80 days, he accepts a wager for 20, 000 from fellow club members, which will be given to him only if he makes it around the world in 80 days. With his newly employed French manservant Passe-partout, he leaves London by train on 2 October 1872. From rescuing a Raja’s young wife from Sati in the exotic land of India, boarding a train from San Francisco to new York which is attacked by a livid Sioux tribe, to finding a Steamboat destined for Bordeaux, France, the heroic traveller’ adventures continue to mesmerise readers even today.

About Jules Verne

Born on 8 February 1828, Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet and playwright who has also been the second most-translated writer in the world since 1979.
Popular for writing about air, underwater and space travel much before submarines or air travel became a reality, Verne was a visionary. Early in life, he began writing for magazines and his collaboration with Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires series that included Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1864), 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1870) and Around The World In 80 Days (1873). A writer of plays, poems, operetta libretti, short stories, essays and miscellaneous non-fiction, Verne, in his works imagined a more harmonious and humanitarian society.
English translations of Verne’s novels began in 1869 with William Lackland’s translation of Five Weeks In A Balloon (originally published in 1863), and continued throughout his writing career, with publishers and translators working together to have his most popular books printed into English language.
On Verne and his influence on literature, Ray Bradbury had remarked, We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.

About The Book

There is no book so bad…that it does not have something good in it. One of the earliest classics from the Spanish Golden Age known as ‘the first modern novel’, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote was published in two volumes. The first volume published in 1605, became a runaway success. Ten years later, in 1615, the second volume was published. Having devoured innumerable chivalric romances, Alonso Quixano, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha, sets out on an adventure to restore order in the world. Sancho Panza, his faithful squire, responds to Quixote’s sermons on knighthood with wit and pragmatism. During his expedition, the knight-errant visits an inn imagining it to be a castle, fights with impudent sorcerers, chases windmills thinking them to be giants, and steals a barber’s basin mistaking it to be the mythic Mambrino’s helmet among other absurdities. Through his protagonist’s ludicrous transformation, Cervantes, not only redefined the form of the novel but also created a thinking, critical reader. “If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote,” said Ben Okri, Booker Prize winner, of this masterpiece.

About Miguel de Cervantes

Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet Miguel de Cervantes was the creator of one of the world’s finest literary masterpieces, Don Quixote. Born near Madrid in 1547, his formative years were spent in economic adversities.
In 1571, when Cervantes was serving as a soldier in the Battle of Lepanto, he was gravely injured. In 1575, after fighting in military campaigns against the Turks, he was captured and kept as a slave for five years.
In 1597, he landed back in jail in Seville over dealings with fraudulent bankers. During this time, the idea for Don Quixote was born. The first volume was published in 1605 and became an instant success. Over time, it was translated into more than 60 languages. The second volume was published in 1615.
The author of seminal works like La Galatea, Rinconete y Cortadillo, and Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), Cervantes influenced Spanish literature so much that Spanish was often called la lengua de Cervantes (language of Cervantes).
Cervantes’s works have inspired stalwarts like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry Fielding among others.
In 1613, William Shakespeare, a contemporary and an admirer of Cervantes, wrote The History of Cardenio (universally known as Shakespeare’s lost play), based on Cardenio, a character borrowed from Don Quixote. Miguel de Cervantes died in 1616.