Other editions of book Jacob's Room

This impressionistic novel by Virginia Woolf marks the author's first move toward the experimentation for which she would later become recognized. Through a montage of passing images, conversations, and stream-of-consciousness monologues, it tells the story of Jacob Flanders, an idealistic and sensitive young man attempting to reconcile his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of contemporary society. As Jacob grows from childhood into adulthood, we follow his experiences in college and in travels, in love and in war, through the perspectives and impressions of the various people in his life. Jacob's Room established Virginia Woolf's reputation as a highly poetic and symbolic writer who places emphasis not on plot or action but on the psychological realm of her characters. Hailed by friends such as T. S. Eliot, the book represents a turning point in the history of the English novel. Wrote E. M. Forster, "The impossible has occurred...A new type of fiction has swum into view."

First published in 1922, Jacob’s Room was Virginia Woolf’s third novel and the first in her more experimental mode. Set in the years leading up to the First World War, the work is an elegy, not just for an individual character, but for a generation lost in and affected by the war. This Shakespeare Head Press edition restores the text to its original form, notably recreating the space breaks on the page with which Woolf deliberately fragmented her narrative. The editor provides an extensive introduction, discussing the genesis of the novel, its biographical elements, the process of composition and revision, and the history of its early critical reception. A series of notes helps the reader to identify references and allusions, from sponge-bag trousers and gold beater’s skin to Tonks and Steer, and the Hampstead Garden Suburbs; while an appendix lists variants between the first UK and first US editions of the work.

“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.” Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Jacob's Room is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 26 October 1922. The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob (except for those times when we do indeed get Jacob's perspective). Thus, although it could be said that the book is primarily a character study and has little in the way of plot or background, the narrative is constructed as a void in place of the central character, if indeed the novel can be said to have a 'protagonist' in conventional terms. Motifs of emptiness and absence haunt the novel and establish its elegiac feel. Jacob is described to us, but in such indirect terms that it would seem better to view him as an amalgamation of the different perceptions of the characters and narrator. He does not exist as a concrete reality, but rather as a collection of memories and sensations. Literary significance 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 and narration. 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).

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. Check out our other books at www.dogstailbooks.co.uk

Virginia Woolf's third novel, Jacob's Room, marked a radical, new departure in her style: the most experimental of all her novels, it enacts the 'smashing and crashing' of form that Woolf called for in the modernist movement. Set in pre-war England, the novel tells the life story of Jacob Flanders. Through the collective memories of those who knew him, we follow his childhood, through to his time at Cambridge, and then into adulthood. Jacob's Room is an evocative and poignant story, made more so so as Woolf describes scenes and characters with a beauty unsurpassed. The author combines language in a majestic manner as she meditates on the inexorable flux of life and provides an elegiac stream found in her best-known work such as To the Lighthouse

This impressionistic novel by Virginia Woolf marks the author's first move toward the experimentation for which she would later become recognized. Through a montage of passing images, conversations, and stream-of-consciousness monologues, it tells the story of Jacob Flanders, an idealistic and sensitive young man attempting to reconcile his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of contemporary society. As Jacob grows from childhood into adulthood, we follow his experiences in college and in travels, in love and in war, through the perspectives and impressions of the various people in his life. Jacob's Room established Virginia Woolf's reputation as a highly poetic and symbolic writer who places emphasis not on plot or action but on the psychological realm of her characters. Hailed by friends such as T. S. Eliot, the book represents a turning point in the history of the English novel. Wrote E. M. Forster, "The impossible has occurred...A new type of fiction has swum into view."

“Delicious humour; the charm of writing that seems as simple as talking but is always exquisite.” -London Times "Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.” The tale of Jacob Flanders, a lonely young man unable to reconcile his love of classical culture with the chaotic reality of World War I society, unfolds in a series of brief impressions and conversations, internal monologues, and letters. A sensitive examination of character development and the meaning of life. Elegiac in tone, the work beautifully memorializes the longing and pain of a generation that lost so many of its most promising young men to World War I. Upon it's release E.M. Forster remarked, "amazing.... a new type of fiction has swum into view." Virginia Woolf was an influential English author best known for her involvement with the Bloomsbury Group, an association of intellectuals and artists including, John Maynard Keynes and E. M. Forster, who are credited with influencing early twentieth-century literature, criticism, and economics. Woolf became a prolific writer in between the two World Wars, and some of her most famous works, including Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, are now among the most prominent English books of the modern period. A life-long sufferer of depression, Woolf was institutionalized numerous times before taking her own life in 1941.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Virginia Woolf's first original and distinguished work, Jacob's Room is the story of a sensitive young man named Jacob Flanders. The life story, character and friends of Jacob are presented in a series for separate scenes and moments from his childhood, through college at Cambridge, love affairs in London, and travels in Greece, to his death in the war. Jacob's Room established Virginia Woolf's reputation as a highly poetic and symbolic writer who places emphasis not on plot or action but on the psychological realm of occupied by her characters.