This book explores Virginia Woolf's engagement with the professions in her life and writing. Woolf underscored the significance of the professions to society, such as the opportunity they provided for a decent income and the usefulness of professional accreditation. However, she also resisted their hierarchical structures and their role in creating an overspecialised and fragmented modernity, which prevented its members from leading whole, fulfilling lives. This book shows how Woolf's writing reshaped the professions so that they could better serve the individual and society, and argues that her search for alternatives to existing professional structures deeply influenced her literary methods and experimentation.

Evelyn Chan is currently Assistant Professor of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her PhD on Virginia Woolf at the University of Cambridge in 2010.