Part of The Penguin Great Ideas series, this cover for Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own finally enticed OOMK’s Rose Nordin to pick up the much-cited title. She explains its appeal.
The Penguin Great Ideas series of little books is so delightful. The collection beautifully reimagines iconic written works, and in doing so introduced me to the vital essay A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. The series is produced in a sweet, slim, pocket format with clever and playful covers and a varied sense of uniformity that makes them so perfectly collectable. I want to own them all. I only have a small selection but one I particularly love and revisit regularly is A Room of One’s Own.
I had seen this feminist essay cited and heard it referenced so often that I mistakenly felt familiar enough with the concept to overlook reading it. The beautiful edition from Penguin caught my attention enough to commit to the content. I was enriched and motivated by the essay.
Woolf discusses the female literary canon and examines? the context of the authors’ circumstances and obstacles as women. She highlights the limitation gender and social class has upon creative practice – stating that due to this, conclusively: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.”
This statement is loaded and explored in the essay. A woman needs to be financially independent to be creatively independent and must have a literal and figurative space for creative practice to exists in. This concept resonates with the intentions of OOMK (One of My Kind) zine, as we also aim to create both a printed space and a physical community for female creative practice outside the limitations of patriarchy.
The cover visually reflects the importance of space by affording Woolf’s name room to speak, as it does with the title and the salient statement, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.” The window is intricate and ornate and centred, reflecting the aspirations of the luxury of a safe space in which a woman’s creative work can exist and thrive.
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OOMK
…or One of My Kind is a biannual magazine produced by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi, Heiba Lamara and Sabba Khan. Focused around a different theme each issue, OOMK aims to discuss the creativity and spirituality of women by exploring faith, activism and identity. The team has recently curated a reading room and exhibition at the gallery of London’s Islamic Human Rights Commission, which features zines, prints, posters and books by women artists and writers. The collection will be added to by visitors until the exhibition closes on 30 April.
Penguin Great Ideas
This classic Penguin series was conceived after editor Simon Winder noticed philosophy books on sale at tobacconists in Italy and thought the UK readership would appreciate similarly accessible publications. David Pearson was tasked with developing the series identity, and asked Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon and Alistair Hall to work with him on the covers, creating type-led designs using fonts that echo the time period of the text.