125 years ago today, Adeline Virginia Stephen was born. Yes, Virginia did grow up to be the novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose struggles with depression and mental illness ended with her death by suicide in 1941, when she waded into the River Ouse, weighed down by stones in her pockets. (来源：英语麦当劳－英语杂志 EnglishCN.com)

But today we remember Virginia Woolf for the phrase she coined to title her 1929 essay: A room of one’s own. (来源：英语麦当劳－英语杂志 EnglishCN.com)

Virginia Woolf used that term in her discussion of the difficulties faced by women who would be artists when she argued intellectual freedom demands financial freedom. "A woman," wrote Woolf, "must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Although J.K. Rowling, among others, has proven the literal meaning of Woolf's words is not (or perhaps "no longer") true, the figurative truth of her claim lives on. A room of one's own is a metaphor for a private place, away from external distractions and demands in which an individual has the solitude required for thinking and working.

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