“When a subject is highly controversial – and any question about sex is that – one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.”
Well, this is Virginia Woolf's 1929 book based on her lecture series to do just that. A charming, witty, and ponderous work bringing to light the many obstacles women faced (and face) in life, the pressures and follies of writers of all genders, an early inquiry into the skewed vision a library full of only men's voices might have, and a vision for a future of literature, which after a century of hard won battles, looks very much like our world today.