Jacob's Room
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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).
Novels: The Voyage Out · Night and Day · Jacob's Room · Mrs Dalloway · To the Lighthouse · The Waves · The Years · Between the Acts
Short stories: A Haunted House · A Society · Monday or Tuesday · An Unwritten Novel · The String Quartet · Blue & Green · Kew Gardens · The Mark on the Wall · The New Dress
Biographies: Orlando: A Biography · Flush: A Biography · Roger Fry: A Biography
Non-fiction: Modern Fiction · The Common Reader · A Room of One's Own · On Being Ill · The London Scene · The Second Common Reader · Three Guineas · The Death of the Moth and Other Essays · The Moment and Other Essays
[edit] External link
- Jacob's Room, available freely at Project Gutenberg
