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Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
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About This Book
An engrossing group portrait of five women writers, including Virginia Woolf, who moved to London's Mecklenburgh Square in search of new freedom in their life and work. "I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting."--Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925 In the early twentieth century, Mecklenburgh Square--a hidden architectural gem in London's Bloomsbury--was a radical address, home to students, struggling artists, and revolutionaries. And in the pivotal era between the two world wars, the lives of five remarkable women intertwined around this one address: the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. In an era when women's freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they could live, love, and--above all--work independently. With sparkling insight and a novelistic style, Francesca Wade sheds new light on a group of artists and thinkers whose pioneering work would enrich the possibilities of women's lives for generations to come.
Reviews
"Engaging profiles of women who found metaphorical rooms of their own in interwar London."
"Wade's portrait of Sayers, one of England's most private writers, perceptively illuminates her fierce independence, her complicated relationships and her often grotesque novelistic imagination ..."
"It also makes a point of showing how these women, while not necessarily knowing each other personally, were inspired by each other's work ..."
"Wade seems to have memorized each available word from each of the women and succeeds in offering a new glimpse into Bloomsbury life, already a much written on location in the British literary mythos."
"But Wade's book rises above the publishing cliches to tell a deeper story about women's autonomy in the early 20th century, about their work and education, politics and activism."
"In a captivating series of minibiographies of five women, all trailblazing writers who lived in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square at some point between 1916 and 1940, Square Haunting builds a compelling case that each woman's time there represented a crucial stage in her efforts to forge an independent life when doing so was both uncommon and difficult ..."
"Women must undertake that project anew in each generation because the social structures to support it do not exist."
"By showing how these women confronted an ideological divide still existing today, this superbly written and researched work will make them highly relevant for, and accessible to, contemporary audiences"
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