Your own room

500 pounds a year and a room of one's own is the main thing a woman needs for creativity, according to Virginia Woolf. "A Room of One's Own" is a famous essay based on lectures that Woolf gave at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University, in October 1928. In it, she addresses all women involved in literature and recalls her great predecessors - Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot - who were forced to write in the common room, hide manuscripts away from prying eyes and constantly face the opinion that writing is an unworthy occupation for a woman. The essay, despite its journalistic format, does not lose the beauty and precision of style inherent in the work of Virginia Woolf, and is full of subtle humor and self-irony.