In her unforgettable essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf argued that for a woman to concentrate on writing fiction she must have one hundred and fifty pounds a year and a room of her own.

That plea for financial independence and a space in which to write, or just think, without interference, would have resonated deeply with the women in this chapter, for whom independence was either hard won or an unattainable dream. Growing up in an all-female household in which such opinions, and the literature that underpinned them, were taken for granted, I find the stories included here still have the power to shock and inspire.