Set in the halcyon days of pre-World War I innocence, Virginia Woolf's third novel follows the progress of a young man as he moves from adolescence to adulthood in a hazy rite of passage. Wandering through the windswept shores of Cornwall to the sun-scorched landscape of Greece, his character is revealed in a stream of loosely related incidents, thoughts, and impressions.
The story of a man's life from a day in his childhood to the day of his death. "Jacob's Room...comes as a tremendous surprise. The impossible has occurred. The style closely resembles that of Kew Gardens....The break with Night and Day and even with The Voyage Out is complete. A new type of fiction has swum into view" (E. M. Forster).