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A review by thenarrative
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade
5.0
Thank you to Netgalley, Crown Publishing, Tim Duggan Books, Faber, and Francesca Wade for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 5/5
Page Count: 434
Genre: Nonfiction, Biography/Memoir
Upon a glance at the cover, I’m drawn into this book. Upon reading the first words written by Francesca Wade, I am sold. Wade’s writing provides an excellent overview of 5 extraordinary women during the interwar period (between World War I and II). Essentially, the book provides 5 miniature biographies of these women: Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.), Dorothy L Sayers, Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power, and arguably the most famous name, Virginia Woolf.
The prologue opens in 1940, as World War II and the Blitz rage in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London. The home held a 200-year history of activists, lawyers, doctors, artists, and writers. The location was home to the 5 biographical sources in this book, and the prologue concludes with Virginia Woolf rescuing her 24 volumes of diaries, and never living in London again.
Wade then provides a detailed history of Mecklenburgh Square. The people who lived there beforehand and the important moments crafted in its walls. Side note, as someone who has lived minutes from the area during my graduate programs, I found myself instantly pulled into memories thanks to Wade’s writing. Her ways of describing the area are almost magical. What is now a neighborhood in the middle of Zone 1 London where properties sell for millions was once an area for the working class, where artists, poor families, and the radical working woman slept. “At last, here was a district of the city where a room of one’s own could be procured,” Wade says, echoing Woolf. Her book title originates from a 1925 diary entry, in which Woolf extols the pleasures of “street sauntering and square haunting”. Learning of the lives who lived in Bloomsbury and MS is a reminder of how influential every corner of London can be.
The following 5 chapters are the lives of the above women illuminated by their shared location.
Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.) - 1886-1961. Lived in MS from 1916-18
Living in #44, H.D.,wrote an autobiographical novel cycle about her troubled marriage. Doolittle, an American, is associated with the 20th-century imagist poet group which included Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She also published Sea Garden (1916) and The God (1917) while living in MS.
Dorothy L Sayers - 1893-1957. Lived in MS from 1920-21
Sayers moved into the rooms of #44 in MS about 2 years after H.D. vacated. The first of Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries was written amongst the musty walls. It would be published in 1923 and be the first of 11 featuring the character, but none after the outbreak of WW2.
Jane Ellen Harrison - 1850-1928. Lived in MS From 1926-28
Harrison was a classicist and linguist, being one of the founders of modern studies revolving around Ancient Greek religion and mythology. Ideologically, she is considered a moderate suffragist. Following World War I, Harrison never visited Italy or Greece again. Her last work, Reminiscences of a Student’s Life, was published in 1925. Her time in #11 MS began as her health began to fail and would conclude with her death. Harrison shared her rooms on MS with her long time friend and collaborator - Hope Mirrlees, and Mirrlees moved to South Africa after WW2.
Eileen Power - 1889-1940. Lived in MS from 1922-40
Power is an economic historian and medievalist. She spent the most time in MS (#20) of any of the other subjects of Wade’s study. She would leave the rooms with her death of heart failure in 1940. Power was exceptionally important in her fields and although she might not be as well known as Woolf, she is an important name in the study of social history related to the everyday person over the importance related to dates or battles, something I happen to study for a living.
Virginia Woolf - 1882-1941. Lived in MS from 1939-40
11 years after Harrison’s death, Virginia Woolf moved into Mecklenburgh Square during the outbreak of WWII. From #37, she multitasked between making blackout curtains and working on her final novel, Between the Acts. From the basement, her husband, Leonard Woolf, ran the Hogarth Press. Five months after Woolf left London for good, she committed suicide.
Wade’s book focuses on the idea that none of these incredibly influential women lived in MS at the same time nor did they know each other on a personal level. Although Woolf and Power’s time does overlap, the fact of them being strangers is striking. MS is seen as a halfway house, while these women decide their next move in the world. Except for Power, that is, who lived in MS for 18 years until her death. Her epilogue of sorts focuses on that next chapter and where the women and their lives after living on MS. Woolf’s suicide, Power’s attempted sabbatical and its cancellation in 1940 due to the war (she would die soon after), Harrison’s death and the effect it had on her former flatmate, Sayers time on the Author’s Planning Committee of Ministry of Information and the later publications and stop of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and H.D.’s time in Switzerland (where she would die in 1961) and traveling through Europe during and after the war.
The final two sections of the final chapter focusing on the epilogue of Mecklenburgh Square, where I walk through daily on my trips to the coffee shop, to the post office, and for my grocery shop. After this fantastic read, I know I will be interested in whatever Wade produces next. I also know I will be looking around differently as I cross the walks of Mecklenburgh. I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend visiting Mecklenburgh Square if you have the chance. Just take the tube to Kings Cross St. Pancras - and you are golden!
Rating: 5/5
Page Count: 434
Genre: Nonfiction, Biography/Memoir
Upon a glance at the cover, I’m drawn into this book. Upon reading the first words written by Francesca Wade, I am sold. Wade’s writing provides an excellent overview of 5 extraordinary women during the interwar period (between World War I and II). Essentially, the book provides 5 miniature biographies of these women: Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.), Dorothy L Sayers, Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power, and arguably the most famous name, Virginia Woolf.
The prologue opens in 1940, as World War II and the Blitz rage in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London. The home held a 200-year history of activists, lawyers, doctors, artists, and writers. The location was home to the 5 biographical sources in this book, and the prologue concludes with Virginia Woolf rescuing her 24 volumes of diaries, and never living in London again.
Wade then provides a detailed history of Mecklenburgh Square. The people who lived there beforehand and the important moments crafted in its walls. Side note, as someone who has lived minutes from the area during my graduate programs, I found myself instantly pulled into memories thanks to Wade’s writing. Her ways of describing the area are almost magical. What is now a neighborhood in the middle of Zone 1 London where properties sell for millions was once an area for the working class, where artists, poor families, and the radical working woman slept. “At last, here was a district of the city where a room of one’s own could be procured,” Wade says, echoing Woolf. Her book title originates from a 1925 diary entry, in which Woolf extols the pleasures of “street sauntering and square haunting”. Learning of the lives who lived in Bloomsbury and MS is a reminder of how influential every corner of London can be.
The following 5 chapters are the lives of the above women illuminated by their shared location.
Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.) - 1886-1961. Lived in MS from 1916-18
Living in #44, H.D.,wrote an autobiographical novel cycle about her troubled marriage. Doolittle, an American, is associated with the 20th-century imagist poet group which included Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She also published Sea Garden (1916) and The God (1917) while living in MS.
Dorothy L Sayers - 1893-1957. Lived in MS from 1920-21
Sayers moved into the rooms of #44 in MS about 2 years after H.D. vacated. The first of Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries was written amongst the musty walls. It would be published in 1923 and be the first of 11 featuring the character, but none after the outbreak of WW2.
Jane Ellen Harrison - 1850-1928. Lived in MS From 1926-28
Harrison was a classicist and linguist, being one of the founders of modern studies revolving around Ancient Greek religion and mythology. Ideologically, she is considered a moderate suffragist. Following World War I, Harrison never visited Italy or Greece again. Her last work, Reminiscences of a Student’s Life, was published in 1925. Her time in #11 MS began as her health began to fail and would conclude with her death. Harrison shared her rooms on MS with her long time friend and collaborator - Hope Mirrlees, and Mirrlees moved to South Africa after WW2.
Eileen Power - 1889-1940. Lived in MS from 1922-40
Power is an economic historian and medievalist. She spent the most time in MS (#20) of any of the other subjects of Wade’s study. She would leave the rooms with her death of heart failure in 1940. Power was exceptionally important in her fields and although she might not be as well known as Woolf, she is an important name in the study of social history related to the everyday person over the importance related to dates or battles, something I happen to study for a living.
Virginia Woolf - 1882-1941. Lived in MS from 1939-40
11 years after Harrison’s death, Virginia Woolf moved into Mecklenburgh Square during the outbreak of WWII. From #37, she multitasked between making blackout curtains and working on her final novel, Between the Acts. From the basement, her husband, Leonard Woolf, ran the Hogarth Press. Five months after Woolf left London for good, she committed suicide.
Wade’s book focuses on the idea that none of these incredibly influential women lived in MS at the same time nor did they know each other on a personal level. Although Woolf and Power’s time does overlap, the fact of them being strangers is striking. MS is seen as a halfway house, while these women decide their next move in the world. Except for Power, that is, who lived in MS for 18 years until her death. Her epilogue of sorts focuses on that next chapter and where the women and their lives after living on MS. Woolf’s suicide, Power’s attempted sabbatical and its cancellation in 1940 due to the war (she would die soon after), Harrison’s death and the effect it had on her former flatmate, Sayers time on the Author’s Planning Committee of Ministry of Information and the later publications and stop of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and H.D.’s time in Switzerland (where she would die in 1961) and traveling through Europe during and after the war.
The final two sections of the final chapter focusing on the epilogue of Mecklenburgh Square, where I walk through daily on my trips to the coffee shop, to the post office, and for my grocery shop. After this fantastic read, I know I will be interested in whatever Wade produces next. I also know I will be looking around differently as I cross the walks of Mecklenburgh. I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend visiting Mecklenburgh Square if you have the chance. Just take the tube to Kings Cross St. Pancras - and you are golden!