Reviews

A compilation of 5 biographies, all of British women writers in the years in between the World Wars. There’s a tenuous connection with their lives in which all lived at one point in or around a location in London, but it’s a good enough excuse to cover the lives and works of some of these very well known (Woolf & HD) and some of the lesser known figures. It kicks off with HD and it’s likely the strongest section, at least for me. Workmanlike, it provides a good overview but certainly doesn’t blow the reader away. The Woolf section was better than the earlier published biography that came out this year (“Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World”), but at the same time the recent book “No Man’s Land” documented the lives of the first women war surgeons in the first WW in London who were also of that era and a bit more unsung.

backpackfullofbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

dystopia's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

kjboldon's review

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4.0

Really enjoyed this group biography linked by geography and the period between the wars. Of the five, I'd only heard of HD, Sayers and Woolf. The sections on Sayers and Eileen Power were my favorites. This is like a scrapbook, snapshots of their lives at a particular place and point in time. I especially enjoyed the aspects of how hard they all had to hustle to live a life of the mind and by the pen. Their love affairs were often forgettable, but the tiny supports that women gave to one another, like Woolf's nod to Harrison in A Room of One's Own, were quiet delights: "small moments which have shown how these figures, too, were quietly bolstered by the examples of other women--including, in some cases, each other." (319)

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