An important text in early Modernism, Jacob's Room is unique and experimental in style. Ostensibly, it follows the life of Jacob Flanders, evoked purely through other people's perceptions of him. Jacob remains absent throughout. He is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. The novel's composition coincided with the consolidation of Woolf's interest in feminism and she criticises the privileged thoughtless smugness of patriarchy, but also captures the pain and longing of a generation of men lost to war.
