Jacob's Room: Virginia Woolf (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

by Virginia Woolf (Author), Sue Roe (Editor)

• New

  Paperback
  1992

  $10.75

  Jacob Flanders is a young man passing from adolescence to adulthood in a hazy rite of passage. From his boyhood on the windswept shores of Cornwall to his days as a student at Cambridge, his elusive, chameleon-like character is gradually revealed in a stream of loosely related incidents and impressions: whether through his mother's letters, his friend's conversations, or the thoughts of the women who adore him. Then we glimpse him as a young man, caught under the glare of a London streetlamp. It is 1914, he is twenty-six, and Europe is on the brink of war ...This tantalizing novel heralded Woolf's bold departure from the traditional methods of the novel, with its experimental play between time and reality, memory and desire.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.25

  Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece, but this is no orthodox Bildungsroman. Jacob is presented in glimpses, in fragments, as Woolf breaks down traditional ways of representing character and experience. The novel's composition coincided with the consolidation of Woolf's interest in feminism, and she criticizes the privileged, thoughtless smugness of patriarchy, the other side , the men in clubs and Cabinets . Her stylistic innovations are conscious attempts to realize and develop women's writing and the novel dramatizes her interest in the ways both language and social environments shape differently the lives of men and women. This book is one of ten World's Classics by Virginia Woolf, and comes with an introduction and explanatory notes to provide guidance for readers new to this author.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $10.74

  WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY LAWRENCE NORFOLK AND ELISABETH BRONFEN. Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, tracing his life from childhood, to Cambridge University, and to his early adult life in artistic London. Jacob always yearns for something greater, and embarks on a voyage to the Mediterranean before the war begins and his fate is forever altered. Impressionistic in style, the narrative is as inspired now as it was when it first appeared.