How much status have women of letters had both past and present?
In the twenties, Virginia Woolf famously wrote that women who wanted to write needed a room of their own. She traced the history of the writers who had come before her and looked ahead to a future in which women writers would have the world at their feet and the ability to embrace it.
But was she right about the limitations of her ancestors? And how easy is it to be a woman of letters nearly a century after Woolf’s words?
Jenni talks to Norma Clarke, who has just written about women of letters of the eighteenth century, and Amanda Craig who is a modern-day woman of letters.
Norma Clarke, The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters, published by Pimlico
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