Final Post

What a lovely, fun question!

It almost sounds like the premise of a novel ...

“If I could go back in time and tell people in a particular era about the future of books I would …

… return to the fall of 1928, to Cambridge University trying to find space to sit in a crowded lecture hall at Newnham College where Virginia Woolf is about to deliver a series of poignant lectures; lectures which will become her infamous extended essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own.’

One of the key points Ms. Woolf makes in her speech is the inability for women to easily access scholarly material due to the prejudice (and pride) of male bureaucracy. She stresses upon a woman's need for financial independence and space of her own to expand her literary wings. 

I would love to be able to tell Ms. Woolf and all the women in that lecture hall that the world is going to evolve magnificently and mindsets are going to radically change. Female authors will be on equal platforms as their male counterparts and will have equal access to literature, information and anything else their hearts desire (in most parts of the world). That the possibility for women to have a room of their own and financial independence will be realized. That books will be written proudly by female authors and female writers will be celebrated.

I would also implore Ms. Woolf in private to please maintain a healthy distance from the River Ouse.

I shall leave you with one of my favourite, inspiring quotes from Ms. Woolf found in 'A Room of One’s Own'.

“I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”

Thank you for a fantastic semester!

~ Fareh