Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars

(, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'I like this London life...the street-sauntering and square-haunting.' - Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925

In London during the interwar years, five women's lives intertwined around one address. Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were 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.

From the square, these trailblazing women pushed the boundaries of scholarship, literary form and social norms. Taking us into the emotional texture of their lives, Francesca Wade's luminous group biography reveals five unforgettable characters who forged careers that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own.

'Elegant, erudite and absorbing, Square Haunting is a startlingly original debut, and Francesca Wade is a writer to watch.' - Frances Wilson

'A fascinating voyage through the lives of five remarkable women - a moving and immersive portrait.' - Edmund Gordon

Author Bio

Francesca Wade has written for publications including the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, New Statesman and Prospect. She is editor of The White Review, and winner of the Biographers' Club Tony Lothian Prize. Square Haunting is her first book. She lives in London.