A Room of One's Own is the one of the most prolific and pertinent feminist essays of the 20th century. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures Woolf delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. Written with startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, Woolf presents an argument for both a literal and figurative space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men.