Woolf reinvented the novel as an instrument for exploring the inner lives of women, pioneering stream-of-consciousness narration in Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. A Room of One's Own remains the most influential feminist essay in English. She co-founded the Hogarth Press, which published Freud in translation and launched key Modernist writers. She died by suicide aged 59, walking into the River Ouse with stones in her coat pockets.

• Nationality: GB
• Roles: writer