Three Guineas - Softcover

2013 Reprint of 1937 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Woolf received three separate requests for a guinea-one from a women's college building fund, one for a society promoting the employment of professional women, and one to help prevent war. This book is her threefold answer to the following questions: 1. "How should war be prevented?" 2. "Why does the government not support education for women?" (Actually, the fund was a metaphor for family private funds to send the "boys of the family" to college and not the women.) 3. "Why are women not allowed to engage in professional work?" Although "Three Guineas" is a work of non-fiction, it was initially conceived as a "novel-essay" which would tie up the loose ends left in her earlier work, "A Room of One's Own." The book was to alternate between fictive narrative chapters and non-fiction essay chapters, demonstrating Woolf's views on war and women in both types of writing at once. This unfinished manuscript was published in 1937 as "The Pargiters." When Woolf realized the idea of a "novel-essay" wasn't working, she separated the two parts. The non-fiction portion became "Three Guineas." The fiction portion became Woolf's most popular novel during her lifetime, "The Years," which charts social change from 1880 to the time of publication through the lives of the Pargiter family.