Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. From 1915, when she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf maintained an astonishing output of fiction, literary criticism, essays and biography. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917 they founded The Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf suffered a series of mental breakdowns throughout her life, and on 28 March 1941 she committed suicide.

Jacob's Room is Virgina 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 childhood, life at Cambridge University to his early adult life in artistic London. Jacob consistently yearns for something greater and, in an attempt to resuscitate his love of the classics, he embarks on a voyage to the Mediterranean before the begins and his fate is forever altered. In 1922 E. M. Forster wrote of Jacob's Room, 'amazing-a new type of fiction has swum into view'. Impressionistic in style, experimental in approach, this narrative is as inspired now as it was when it first appeared. (20040624)