Three Guineas, published in June 1938 by Woolf's own Hogarth Press, is a feminist, pacifist, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist polemic. It shows Woolf, prior to World War II, at her most politically urgent and reveals how constantly attuned she was to her political, social and cultural surroundings. She was proud of the essay, but grew increasingly worried about the reaction it would elicit from readers and reviewers. She knew she had laid herself bare in this text; her arguments were radical and challenging.

Three Guineas had a long and complex gestation and in many ways the text was the fruit of a decade's research. In 1931 the Junior Council of the London and National Society for Women's Service (a former suffragist

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Published 08 March 2001

Citation: Snaith, Anna. "Three Guineas". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 March 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8321, accessed 20 November 2009.]