Jacob's Room

Jacob Flanders is a uniquely ambiguous protagonist: he is defined almost entirely by others’ impressions and is nearly unknowable as a result - but that does not at all detract from the vitality of Virginia Woolf’s story. In her experimental first novel, she tracks Jacob through the seemingly mundane early years of his life - from a boyhood trip to the Cornwall coast to his college years at Cambridge to his time as an adult in London and Greece - before arriving at his shocking, even tragic, entry into war.

With its stream-of-consciousness style and its ever-shifting timeline, Woolf’s elegiac tale defied conventions and signified a major turning point in twentieth-century English literature: the start of the post-World War I modernist era.

Revised edition: Previously published as Jacob’s Room, this edition of Jacob’s Room (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.