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Jacob's Room

by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

  • Free to read
  • 4 hours to read
  • 14 chapters
  • Reading level: 6th grade

"Jacob's Room" by Virginia Woolf is a novel published in 1922. The story follows Jacob Flanders from childhood through Cambridge and into adulthood in pre-war England, but with a radical twist: Jacob himself remains elusive, known only through the impressions of others. Women in his life—including the reserved Clara Durrant and bohemian artist Florinda—provide glimpses of a man who exists more as absence than presence. This experimental modernist work haunts readers with its void at the center, presenting a protagonist through memories and sensations rather than concrete reality.

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  • England
  • Psychological fiction
  • Young men
  • World War, 1914-1918 · England
  • Experimental fiction

Read the opening

Chapter One

"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, "there was nothing for it but to leave."

Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the sun. She winked quickly. Accidents were awful things. She winked again. The mast was straight; the waves were regular; the lighthouse was upright; but the blot had spread.

"... nothing for it but to leave," she read.

"Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play" (the shadow of Archer, her eldest son, fell across the notepaper and looked blue on the sand, and she felt chilly—it was the third of September already), "if Jacob doesn't want to play"—what a horrid blot! It must be getting late.

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Contents

  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen

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About this edition

This free edition of Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #5670, released 2004-05-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Novels, British Literature.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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