Editing Virginia Woolf (section)

=== Historical feminism ===
According to the 2007 book ''Feminism: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan'' by Bhaskar A. Shukla, "Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, ''Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings'', edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer."<ref name=Shukla51/> In 1928, Woolf took a grassroots approach to informing and inspiring feminism. She addressed undergraduate women at the ODTAA Society at [[Girton College, Cambridge]], and the Arts Society at Newnham College, with two papers that eventually became ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929).

Woolf's best-known nonfiction works, ''[[A Room of One's Own]]'' (1929) and ''[[Three Guineas]]'' (1938), examine the difficulties that female writers and intellectuals faced because men held disproportionate legal and economic power, as well as the future of women in education and society.<ref>{{Cite web|date=4 February 2018|title=The 1930s: 'Women had the vote, but the old agitation went on'|url=http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/04/the-1930s-women-had-the-vote-but-the-old-agitation-went-on|access-date=24 January 2022|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> In ''[[The Second Sex]]'' (1949), [[Simone de Beauvoir]] counts, of all women who ever lived, only three female writers—[[Emily Brontë]], Woolf and "sometimes" [[Katherine Mansfield]]—who have explored "the given".<ref name=Beauvoir53/>