According to Virginia Woolf, 500 pounds a year and a room of one's own are the most important things a woman needs to be creative. 'A Room of One's Own' is a celebrated essay based on lectures Woolf delivered at Newnham and Girton Colleges—two women's colleges at Cambridge University—in October 1928. In it, she addresses all women engaged in literature and recalls her great predecessors—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot—who were forced to write in common rooms, hide their manuscripts from prying eyes, and constantly confront the notion that writing was unworthy of a woman. Despite its journalistic format, the essay retains the beauty and precision of style characteristic of Virginia Woolf's work and is full of subtle humor and self-irony.