Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was one of the twentieth century's most important writers. In addition to writing ten novels, including Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Woolf was the cofounder of the Hogarth Press and a prolific essayist and critic. Her manifesto A Room of One's Own is a cornerstone of modern feminist thought. Urmila Seshagiri is professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination, the editor of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.