From chapter 1 of A Room of One’s Own (1929), word for word. Woolf offers it as “an opinion upon one minor point” near the start of the lecture. The same sentence appears in both 1929 first editions, from the Hogarth Press in London and Harcourt Brace in New York.
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929), chapter 1
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Provenance
The source
Work
A Room of One’s Own
Published
1929 · Hogarth Press (London); Harcourt Brace (New York)
Location
Chapter 1, opening of the lecture
Origin
Papers read at Newnham and Girton colleges, Cambridge, 20 and 26 October 1928
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.
In the original the line is a clause after a dash, not a stand-alone sentence. Woolf frames it modestly as her “opinion upon one minor point.”
Wikiquote lists it in its sourced quotations under A Room of One’s Own (1929), chapter 1, on its Virginia Woolf page ↗. Quote Investigator has no article on the line.
The book grew out of two papers Woolf read on 20 and 26 October 1928 to student societies at Newnham College and Girton College, Cambridge (Wikipedia ↗).
In the last chapter Woolf restates the idea in different words: “it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry” (full text, Project Gutenberg Australia ↗).
✓Public domain
A Room of One’s Own was first published in 1929, before 1931, so it is in the public domain in the United States. Wikisource’s license notice says the edition was published before 1 January 1931, and Wikipedia ↗ notes that it entered the US public domain on 1 January 2025.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Context
Why it mattered
Woolf was asked to speak on “women and fiction.” She told her Cambridge audience she could not give them “a nugget of pure truth.” She offered this practical point instead and spent the rest of the book showing how she reached it. Her argument is that women’s writing had been held back by a lack of money, privacy and leisure, not by a lack of talent.
A few lines later she warns that her “‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being” and tells listeners to “call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please.” The famous sentence itself, though, comes in her opening framing, before that persona takes over.
a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction
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The “money” becomes specific later in the book: “five hundred a year.” In the closing chapter she writes that “five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, that a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself.”
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born Adeline Virginia Stephen, Woolf was a central figure of literary modernism and wrote Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando. With her husband Leonard she ran the Hogarth Press, which first published A Room of One’s Own in 1929. The book grew out of two papers she read to women students at Newnham and Girton colleges, Cambridge, in October 1928.
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Cite this
Chicago
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Hogarth Press, 1929. Chapter 1.
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’?” Last verified 3 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-woman-must-have-money-and-a-room-of-her-own-if-she-is-to/