About the book (from Wikipedia):
Three Guineas is a book-length essay by Virginia Woolf, published in June 1938.
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 1977 as The Pargiters.
When Woolf realised the idea of a “novel–essay” wasn’t working, she separated the two parts. The non-fiction portion became Three Guineas.
Woolf wrote the essay to answer three questions, each from a different society:
From an anti-war society: “How should war be prevented?”
From a women’s college building fund: “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.)
From a society promoting employment of professional women: “Why are women not allowed to engage in professional work?”
