Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from childhood, through his experiences at Cambridge University to his early adult life in artistic London. Jacob consistently yearns for something greater and, in an attempt to resuscitate his love of the classics, he embarks on a voyage to the Mediterranean before the war begins and his fate is forever altered.