Jacob's Room

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Jacob's Room

Author	Virginia Woolf
Country	United Kingdom
Publisher
Released	1922

Jacob's Room is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1922. It centers around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and it is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob. The book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background. The title character is largely based on Virginia Woolf's brother, Julian "Thoby" Stephen.

Set in pre-war England, the novel begins in Jacob's childhood and follows him through college at Cambridge, and then into adulthood. The story is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the prostitute, Florinda, with whom he has an affair. His time in London forms a large part of the story, though towards the end of the novel he travels to Greece. Jacob eventually dies in the war and in lieu of a description of the death scene, Woolf describes the empty room that he leaves behind.

The novel is a departure from Woolf's earlier two novels, The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919), which are more conventional in form. The work is seen as an important modernist text; its experimental form is viewed as a progression of the innovative writing style Woolf presented in her earlier collection of short fiction titled Monday or Tuesday (1919).

[edit] External link

• Jacob's Room, available freely at Project Gutenberg