Virginia Woolf

Woolf wrote novels that follow a mind rather than a plot — a day in London in "Mrs Dalloway", a lighthouse never reached until the end — and, in "A Room of One's Own", set out plainly what a woman needs in order to write: money and a door that shuts.

She had suffered breakdowns since girlhood. On 28 March 1941 she filled her coat pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse, leaving her husband a letter saying she could not spoil his life any longer. Her ashes were buried under an elm in their garden.