The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature

by Bill Goldstein

A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism

The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual journey four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four writers are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting beneath their feet, as Ulysses is published and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is translated into English. Yet, dismal as they felt in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has returned to the pages that would become Passage to India, Lawrence has begun Kangaroo, and Eliot has finished “The Waste Land.”

As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research in libraries and archives, The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Books About Books, Literature, Writing, Literary Criticism

368 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2017

About the author

Bill Goldstein, the founding editor of the books site of The New York Times on the Web, reviews books and interviews authors for NBC's "Weekend Today in New York." He is also curator of public programs at Roosevelt House, the public policy institute of New York's Hunter College. He received a PH.D in English from City University of New York Graduate Center in 2010, and is the recipient of writing fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross and elsewhere. Bill is the author of The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many books have been shaped around the events of a particular year and, in this work, author Bill Goldstein takes a quote from Willa Cather, who said that 1922 was, “the year the world broke in two, ” as a starting point to look at Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster and the challenges they faced during that year. It is generally considered the year of modernism, when it seems the whole of literary London was reading Joyce’s, “Ulysses,” and Proust’s first English translation.

The year began with all four of the authors, who are the subjects of this book, struggling in different ways. Goldstein cleverly weaves potted biographies, alongside the events of the year and the challenges the four authors faced. Virginia Woolf began the year with influenza, her writing limited by illness and unhappy at facing the milestone of turning forty. T.S. Eliot was in Lausanne, recovering from a nervous breakdown, but knowing he had to return to England, a difficult marriage, a job which left him little time to write and financial uncertainty. Forster was returning to England from India, where he faced returning to his dominating mother. Meanwhile, Lawrence started the year in Sicily, before travelling to Australia to write.

During the year, Woolf, Eliot and Forster are in fairly close contact, but Lawrence does not seem to fit the feel of the book as well. There is an interesting part in New York, where the Society for the Suppression of Vice, take exception to “Woman in Love.” However, he is distant in terms of place and, although he was writing, he was certainly not working on one of his best known books. Meanwhile, Woolf was developing, “Mrs Dalloway,” Eliot working on “The Waste Land,” and Forster – after such a long period of not publishing anything that many thought he was dead – continued his, “Indian fragment,” which would evolve into, “A Passage to India.”

In reality, this book is not really what it pretends to be. Not all these great works were published, or even finished, during this year; even if they were started – often after a long period without inspiration or success. Lawrence seems something of a stretch and does not quite work as well. However, the book itself is eminently readable and is a very enjoyable account of literature during the year. As an admirer of Proust, it was gratifying to see the response to his work and interesting to see how the authors reacted to James Joyce. There is much about the trials of publishing, lots of literary gossip and intrigue, and interesting insights into the featured authors. Overall, a very enjoyable read about an important year in literature.

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
-T.S. Eliot

"The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts", said author Willa Cather, referring to the fracture of literature in the year 1922, dividing the old literature from the new and modern one.

The instigators of this breakage may well be James Joyce with his Ulysses and Marcel Proust with his À la recherche du temps perdu which brought the literature to a new modernist era and opened the gates for authors such as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster to renew their perspectives and create works unlike before.
For each of these authors, the year 1922 would be a year of creative change and renaissance.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I utterly loved "The World Broke in Two" -- as a reader and as a writer. It's captivating and inspiring. Bill Goldstein writes like a gifted novelist ("caught in the vise of his grief;" "the burr, examined, became, as usual, a spur;" "what Thayer had lost of face he was making up in circulation"). It just happens that the four main characters are Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster. When I was done, I immediately went to my dog-earred Forster and Woolf and savored them again, too.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some dates that seem to change the world into a 'before' and 'after': the first battles of WW1 that saw an unimaginable number of men slaughtered; the liberation of the Nazi death camps that made the Holocaust visual and visceral to the world; the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 9/11 - Goldstein takes that idea and tries to apply it to 1922 as a 'year that changed literature'. It's a great idea for a book, even if the text itself doesn't quite live up to the programme.

The flaw, in my view, is that only two of the writers under scrutiny - Woolf, Eliot - make ground-breaking progress in this year: Woolf starts work on Mrs. Dalloway, her Proustian book that strives to find a way to blend memory and the present to render the texture of life and character in textual form; and Eliot edits, finalises and publishes The Waste Land, a poem which uses fragments of texts and culture to articulate a broken world.

The other two writers - Forster, Lawrence - feel far more tangential, though at least Forster links socially to Woolf and Eliot. Lawrence is far from the UK, and the writing of Kangaroo can only, with the greatest optimism, be regarded as an event which changes the face of literature. It's difficult to see why Goldstein didn't choose Joyce whose Ulysses was published in 1922, or Proust who was first translated into English in this year. Woolf, Eliot and Forster were all reading them (Woolf with a snobbish disdain for Joyce whom she regards as provincial and underbred!) and their books, arguably, changed the literary game far more profoundly.

That critique aside, this is a wonderfully engrossing read. Goldstein has researched it well and tells his stories with empathy and intelligence. The mix of biography and light textual criticism work well together to keep this 'popular' rather than academic but with substance and heft.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed look at the year 1922 and the lives of major writers such as Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, as well as others including James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Katherine Mansfield (whose popularity Woolf found distressing), and Ezra Pound (who helped T.S. Eliot edit his 1922 masterwork The Waste Land and Other Poems).

Another thread follows D.H. Lawrence as he travels with his wife from Sicily to Ceylon, to Australia, and then to Taos, New Mexico as he finalizes his "unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel" Kangaroo (which never had the benefit of being prosecuted for obscenity, so didn't do as well as his more notorious books).

So four main currents and dozens of side-streams: at times I was unended by the shifts, especially since I wanted to hear more about Woolf and Forster (who were quite good friends), and not so interested in Eliot and Lawrence. However, this is the sort of book I tend to enjoy, so it was a 5 star read for me, and I didn't want it to end.

Here's a little quiz — how should one refer to Leonard and Virginia Woolf, in the plural? Goldstein refers to them as the "Woolves" which I found distracting, and even spellcheck here seeks to correct. Surely as a proper name, the plural of Woolf is Woolfs. I tripped over the Woolves so many times, but that usage is not unknown, apparently. What do you think?

There is an anecdote from E.M. Forster, one that I'd not heard before, that made me chortle — I guess we share a certain dark humour. Travelling in Britain, Morgan Forster went to see the "elderly author" Thomas Hardy, a visit which Morgan found to be rather dull and disappointing. Hardy took him to see the many graves of his pets, enumerating the deaths of each, which Morgan decided was too much of a "dolorous muddle": many had been killed by trains, Snowball, Pella, Kitkin, "she was cut clean in two, clean in two," Hardy said, trailing off into silence. Morgan wondered "Is the railway near?" but no, it was not near. Many other pets had simply gone missing. Morgan had to struggle: "I could scarcely keep grave," he later reported on the visit, reflecting on Hardy's own novels and poems.

I love Morgan's use of the word "grave" here: I could scarcely keep grave.

Overall, this is an intimate biography of writers, writing, and the production of major books in each of their lives. One thing that struck me was how fast some of these books came out. For example, Forster "finished" the manuscript for A Passage to India in late January, 2024 — at which point it was still to be typed and revised. The book was published June 4, 1924. The same is true of Mrs. Dalloway (finished before Christmas, published the following April). So fast!

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The web of all four writers hinges both on their mutual relationships and on the censorship issues of their time. A very interesting read and fascinating study for the literary ones among us. Well-written and easily engaged. On a personal note I did find Virginia Woolf imminently more interesting than the three men also intimately exposed.

[Charles Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review tk!

[MaryBeth's Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating look at four authors who changed the world of literature - Virginia Woolf, T.S. Elliot, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster. This book chronicles each authors life during the year 1922 as they wrote some of their most important and well known books. I listened to the audio, brilliantly narrated by the author himself, and felt transported back to that time. I couldn't help but think how amazing it must have been to do the research for this with access to their personal papers and diaries. This is a must read for any modernist literature lovers.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Willa Cather pronounced that 'the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts'. WWI had been one of the most devastating conflicts in world history, leaving 41 million dead. Those who survived combat returned home wounded in body and soul and mind. Vast stretches of Europe had been turned into a wasteland, leaving millions of refugees. The Victorian world view and values were irrelevant and archaic. A new world view was arising from the ashes.

The World Broke in Two by Bill Goldstein presents the personal and artistic struggles of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence to create literature that spoke to this changed world.

James Joyce's Ulysses and the newly translated In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust were the literary sensations of the day. T. S. Eliot was a huge promoter of Joyce's book, which Lawrence found unreadable. Proust was a huge influence on Woolf, as was Eliot's poem The Waste Land which he had read aloud at her home. Forster was inspired by Proust. Each writer was searching for a new voice and vision.

"Well--what remains to be written after that?" Virginia Woolf after reading Proust in 1922

The authors' personal lives were a mess.

Eliot suffered a nervous breakdown and had an ill wife. He could not seem to let go of his poem The Wasteland and strung publishers along. He wore green tinted makeup to appear even more pathetic.

It had been years since Forster's last published novel. He lived with his smothering mother and was sexually frustrated, longing for love. He escaped by taking a position in India. He fell in love with a younger, married man who played the lovestruck Forster. And then the man died. Forster was in grief, unable to finish what was to become his last novel, A Passage to India.

Woolf was ill much of the year. She was trying to find a voice and style that was new. Mrs. Dalloway started as a minor character but was growing into her own novel. Goldstein writes that Joyce, Proust, and Eliot seemed to raise the question: "What connects it together?" Woolf sought to find "some sort of fusion" that was missing in Ulysses and The Waste Land.

And Lawrence continued to wander the world with Frieda, his novels banned as obscene. They had left England in 1917, going to Australia, and then America. Invited to live in Taos, he determined to write an "American novel from that centre."

The Waste Land was finally published late in the year, and a monetary prize was given to Eliot. He left his bank job to work for the publisher that became Faber and Faber. Forster's novel A Passage To India was published in 1924, dedicated to his beloved, and became a best seller. Lawrence published Aaron's Rod in 1922 and his Australian novel Kangaroo the following year. He became financially comfortable. Woolf's story Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street was published in 1923 and her novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1925.

My first Forster book was A Passage to India. I discovered Eliot in my late teens. Woolf was a later happy discovery; I have also read several books about her life. Although I have not read Lawrence's novels I have enjoyed his stories and poetry. And, in college, I had an honors course on Joyce's Ulysses.With this background, I was very interested in learning about the relationship between these writers and how they were inspired by Joyce and Proust.

I had not realized how much of Eliot's personal life can be found in The Wasteland, including clips of conversations. The oppression felt in the poem was very personal, rooted in his private life, as well as influenced by his contemporary world. Forster, Woolf, and Eliot suffered from depression and were emotionally fragile. Poor Forster, unable to be open about his sexual orientation, writing about love between men and women and longing for a fulfilling adult love of his own.

A reviewer I read said she would not want to spend time with any of these writers. I found that sad. I am amazed to think what these authors accomplished considering the burdens they labored under, Eliot working in a dull office job, his loveless marriage and ill wife; lonely Forster staying with his overbearing mother; Woolf fighting depression; Lawrence driven from place to place with Frieda. All having seen a devastating war upend everything that seemed permanent.

I found Goldstein's book an interesting read both as biography and as an examination of an important moment in literature.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Murray Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this approach to biography, narrowing the period to a single (crucial) year, while broadening the remit to include four subjects instead of the usual one. It has the advantage that you skip the (often dull, because they’re not writing) childhood to get to the meat of a writer’s life. Plus, if you get bored with one author’s tribulations, you soon shift focus to another’s, so there’s plenty of variety.

The World Broke in Two looks at four writers who brought poetry and the novel into a modernist age: “Woolf, Forster, Eliot, and Lawrence were, at the start of 1922, writers in deep despair, privately confronting an uncertain creative future; each of them felt literally at a loss for words… Behind these four writers’ creative struggles and triumphs and private dramas—nervous breakdowns, chronic illness, intense loneliness, isolation, and depression, not to mention the difficulties of love and marriage and legal and financial troubles—lay a common spectral ghost: the cataclysm of World War I that each of them, in 1922, almost four years after the Armistice, was at last able to deal with creatively.”

Of the four, Lawrence was the writer I knew least about, and perhaps because of this — or perhaps because he was gadding about the world while the others at least spent the majority of the year close to one another in England — he seemed to fit in the least with the others’ interweaving lives. (Eliot, Forster and Woolf quite often met up. I longed for at least one get-together between the others and Lawrence, if only because of Goldstein’s writing: “There was very little about Lawrence that wasn’t irritating to someone.”) But, as I didn’t know a lot about any of the lives except Eliot’s, (and that seems slightly different in every book about him I read, so it’s always worth trying another), this was a good introduction to these authors’ lives. And it certainly left me wanting to re-read each of the novels/poems that were created in this book’s time period.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got a free copy of this from a Goodreads giveaway. I was mainly interested in Mr. DH Lawrence while also appreciating Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot. The latter 2 were particularly boring people obsessing with what others thought of them. EM Forster was more interesting, being a gay man in a time where that was socially unacceptable. As for the title of the book, the author presents these authors works of 1922 as changing literature, but then mentions on almost every page how they were all responding to what Proust and Joyce had recently written. Should the book not have been called 'Four Authors who responded to Joyce and Proust?' No disrespect intended to these great writers (I still need to read Forster) but 1922 didn't seem special after reading this.

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether this book is really about one particular year is difficult to say: it seems more like four literary biographies, focusing to a large extent on the problems (often very practical ones) that the authors faced. The lives of Woolf, Forster and Eliot are very closely entwined and their works moved in a similar direction.
Lawrence certainly had his problems with writing his books and getting them published, as did the others, but somehow he does not comfortably fit into the modernist mosaic Goldstein has created around the others (maybe he could have been omitted?) The book is very informative and covers aspects of writers' lives which are normally ignored, or at least not mentioned - but it would only suit a person with some knowledge of the authors and a profound interest in detail!

[Tracy Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a long-time reader of works by and about the Bloomsbury group and other writers and artists who were peripherally connected to it, so much of what's in this book was familiar to me. And yet there was much I learned, particularly about E. M. Forster. Either he has not been the subject of a good deal of bio-critical work, or I simply haven't noted and/or read the material, which is odd because he's been my consistent favorite author of the four dealt with here.

I freely confess that most of the people who appear in this account are people I would not want to know, no matter how much I enjoy their work. Goldstein doesn't linger on their personality flaws quite as much as do other biographers, and yet the, ah, difficult quality of their personalities does show through. In fairness, Woolf had more than her share of mental and emotional issues to contend with, and Goldstein touches on those issues rather deftly, not lingering on them, but not dismissing them as either unimportant to Woolf's work, or some kind of hysteria. He is perhaps a bit less kind to Eliot who suffered from vague neurosis for many years, though it seemed as if it was largely due to having to work for a living, and having married a woman as neurotic as he was. Forster seems repressed and unhappy, a quiet, workmanlike writer. And Lawrence, as usual, comes across as unbearable. All that aside, Goldstein does an amazing job of providing the reader with a clear idea of what it's like to be a writer, the roadblocks and uncertainties, the painful self-doubt that often pairs with a sense that our work is possibly the most significant the world will ever know. In that respect alone this book is eye-opening.

In a larger sense it gives the reader a view into the birth of modernism in literature. Though James Joyce and his master work, "Ulysses" is not directly examined here, it permeates the whole of the book. "Ulysses" was serialized from 1918 to 1920, and published in toto in 1922, the year referred to in the book's title. It was a book that changed the way writers viewed literature, and in fact the title of the book comes from a quote by Willa Cather who said that the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts, referring to a sea change not only in literary style but substance as well. The subjects of this volume are aware of "Ulysses," they attempt to read it and are alternately impressed and infuriated by it, but do not remain unchanged by its existence. It becomes a kind of touchstone for contemporary writing, a path out of the old forms and into new ones. Each of the four writers Goldstein follows struggles with these changes, with their sense that there is something more they can do with their work, something greater, more modern, more meaningful. And by the end of 1922, they are all breaking through their blocks to create the works which moved them all into the modern era.

Goldstein does a masterly job of blending both biographical and critical commentary, holding his focus on four writers and the space of one year, yet framing them with what was happening in the world as a whole, and the literary world, showing them in contact with and in relation to other writers such as Joyce, Proust, Pound, and others. It's not exactly what I'd call a good starting point for anyone who is not familiar with the work of these four writers, but if you are, it will expand your understanding of them and their work.

[Sarah]

I am not going to rate this one because I listened to it as an audiobook and sometimes didn't devote my whole attention to it while multi-tasking. Additionally, I was most interested in the Eliot and Woolf sections, though I became increasingly interested in Forster. Lawrence fell through the cracks for me and was, I think, one subject too many for the book's style and scope. (I have somehow managed to read two Forster novels in my life yet can hardly remember anything but Merchant Ivory images. This book did convince me that I need to read A Passage to India soon; I remain largely uninterested in Lawrence.)

I'll probably come back to this to brush up on my Modernists in the future, but what I most enjoyed was the glimpse into Woolf's craft--especially her early drafts of what became Mrs Dalloway-- and her anxieties about having accomplished so little at forty. Overall, this is most successful in its unfolding of Woolf and Forster's consciousness and seĺf-consciousness of themselves as authors.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.
Willa Cather, Not Under Forty

A magnificent book about the Bloomsbury Group. Besides, it covers the literary lives of 4 of my favorite authors. The notes and references provide us with plenty of further bibliography on this subject.

[Cosmic Arcata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable and Interesting.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished The World Broke In Two and many thanks to the Librarything Early Reviewers program for getting a chance to read it.

It's an interesting premise - that 1922 was a significant year in the lives + work of V Woolf, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence and EM Forster although I don't think the author quite pulls it off because Lawrence - although he moved to Taos, wasn't really publishing anything that significant - or certainly not as notable as Mrs Dalloway or The Waste Land. Still it was interesting and very much about the business of writing, the day to day struggles, the difference between working and creating. My mind wandered some at the back and forth Eliot had with his various publishers over The Waste Land. On the other hand, there was a very funny anecdote about Forster, Thomas Hardy and a pet cemetery. Interesting too, how all four writers reacted to Proust and Joyce, both of whom had significant work published in the early 1920s. In some ways, you could say that all four writers began writing in reaction to or inspired by Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past.

For me, the biggest problem with the book was that it didn't inspire me to go back and read any of those authors the way a really good biography or work of criticism can.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, my digital audiobook from the library expired when I was about two-thirds of the way through it. I couldn't renew it, because someone had it on hold. I was engaged in the narrative up to that point, even though I kept thinking, "Does this matter? Is this important?" His focus is so narrow and so academic, and I only really care about Woolf and Forster. And what with the world being on fire, his topic seemed very removed from ... anything. I don't feel the need to hear the rest. I got the gist.

Also, I thought that he was going to describe the change in literature that took place -- the "birth of modernism." But I don't think he was going to explain what changed, exactly. It's implied and inferred, but I was hoping for something more explicit.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sheds light on what it is like to be an acclaimed author who is also an avid reader. I'm surprised to learn that some of the greatest literary minds didn't always understand what other great authors were trying to say.
I'm also impressed by the effort to "find the right words" these authors struggled with, particularly Woolf in "Mrs. Dalloway" and Forester in "A Passage To India".
I have not read either of those books but I think I would like to.

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good background on D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster. Interesting that the year 1922 provided so many strong writers who are often read today. I found T. S. Eliot the least interesting. Goldstein is able to show the difficult lives/marriages/challenges these authors endured. He has done extensive research; I was glad to know more about Forster as I had just read Room with A View and Howards End. Recommended for readers wanting to know more about these four authors.

[☄ · Rating 4 out of 5]

came for woolf and lorenzo, stayed for e.m. forster somehow having direct access to my thoughts?? one certainly loves to see it

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing book will be of interest to anybody who is involved with or has an interest in any of the following: the creative process, books, history, and/or experiencing a non-fiction book that reads like a novel and includes love stories, mental illness, jealousy and suspense regarding major changes in the world after World War I.

As a writer, I will focus this review on the benefits that reading this book might bring to those who write, want to write, or who are fascinated about the creative process and want to find out more about it.

The four famous writers discussed in this book, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and E.M. Forster all had different ways that they approached the writing process. Bill Goldstein describes in depth the process for each of these writers. For example, Virginia Woolf found two hours every morning, “the sacred morning hours…Phrase tossing can only be done then.” She found walking and journal writing extremely helpful for her writing. “She kept to both as regularly as possible, believing, as she put it in 1919, “the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.” Identifying the right time and place to write was a critical decision for each of the four and they all chose a different pattern for their writing endeavors.

The sharing of ideas while reading and discussing each other’s work was a second theme about the creative process that surfaced. I have spoken to many writers who find great benefit in joining writer’s groups to do the same thing that was done by authors in the 1920’s. An example of how reading each other’s work at times was helpful describes how E.M. Forster learned from Virginia Woolf. The following passage describes him writing to her about the copy of her book Jacob’s Room she had given him.

“It was an ‘amazing success,’ he told her, and his mind was occupied with ‘wondering what developments, both of style and form, might come out of it.’ He had read it, in other words, as a novelist thinking about the use it might be to him.”

A third theme related to the creative process dealt with how each of the four worked to overcome sometimes debilitating physical and mental challenges. For example, “T.S. Eliot marked the end of 1921 in Lausanne, Switzerland, continuing to recover from a nervous breakdown so severe in October he had taken three months’ leave of absence from his job at Lloyds Bank…Financial uncertainty, an unhappy marriage, and a stultifying anxiety over the lack of time his job at Lloyds left to write had sculpted what Virginia Woolf called the ‘grim marble’ of Elliot’s face into puffy hollows.” One of the ways he overcame this was by leaving his job at Lloyd’s in 1925 after the successful publication of The Wasteland, a move that was encouraged by many of his literary colleagues.

If you love literature that fact alone will make this book a joy to read as you learn about four literary greats while enjoying a story that has dozens of twists and turns. As I have outlined, there is also much to be learned about the writing process for those who write or want to write. Bill Goldstein has written a valuable and useful book. I highly recommend it.

[Cory]

1922 was an intense, anxiety-fueled year for these four writers, all of whom underestimated and downplayed their work...but who wouldn't in a year that saw the publication of Joyce's Ulysses and the English translation of Proust?

High points: there is a memorably dreamy passage about Forster reading Proust for the first time aboard a ship en route from Egypt to England via Marseille, having just departed from the man he loved for the last time. And it was totally absorbing to read about Woolf overcoming her intimidation of Eliot and Joyce to write the fucking masterpiece that is "Mrs. Dalloway." Goldstein has a deep understanding of the intuitive and emotional challenges of writing - so many moments made me nod in agreement and slacken my jaw in recognizing a familiar abstract state articulated with such accuracy and precision.

Kind-of-eh point: amazing as it was to read an in-depth account of Woolf developing Mrs. Dalloway, I struggled with Goldstein's forceful attempt to tie the narrative back to her personal life. I have always understood "Mrs. Dalloway" as a work that emerged from Woolf's struggle with mental illness, but it never guided my reading of the book. So it felt odd to overlook the narrative motor of that text, which was so revolutionary, for a kind of predictable autobiographical reading.

Low points: Eliot and Lawrence came across as the embodiments of Great Man Syndrome. Not to mention, they both claim to be "struggling" with money, yet Eliot turns down several REALLY GOOD offers to publish "The Waste Land" over petty shit, and Lawrence decides to just travel to random places because he's bored and uninspired. Except for Lawrence's censorship trial (which he didn't even show up to) and Eliot's recitation of "The Waste Land" in the Woolfs' living room, my experience reading the Eliot and Lawrence chapters alternated between boredom and frustration.

General observation: plenty of juicy diary entries, clandestine letters, abundant gossip, and courtroom drama. Bill Goldstein's enthusiasm is evident throughout, which does a lot to animate some of the more tedious plotlines. Feeling motivated to read some of Woolf and Proust's biographies.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second go at this review and I would skip it, but this book is too good and important not to review. Bill Goldstein is the book critic and author interviewer on Today in New York Weekend as well as working at Hunter College in NYC. This book covers the year 1922 when four famous authors were working hard on books that would not only change their lives, but change literature going forward. I have not read any of their work since school and they were lumped together in my mind. Dr. Goldstein presents them , both in their personal and their writing lives first alone and then together as they interact and meet up. All different personalities, they all had their struggles as writers and their self-doubts, but all were working to write differently according to their own methods. In addition, they mostly had the same worries as everyone else: money, parents, class and love affairs. Dr. Goldstein has written the best kind of narrative non-fiction containing a great story, well written. Edmund Wilson has blurbed the book and he is correct: "You will feel--and be!--much smarter after you read it."

[Rich Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had looked forward to this book having read a review about it in Publishers Weekly and being a fan of both Woolf and Eliot and interested in Lawrence and Forster, but it just didn't catch my interest. Part of it, I felt, was the writing itself. It felt like a long synthesis essay that I'd ask my students to write with endless quotes from personal letters and excerpts from their works strung together with very little analysis to very literally tell the story of what they were doing during that year. Further, the four authors are dwarfed by Joyce's Ulysses, and it makes it seem that the four title subjects and the works they're looking to publish that year are less important themselves than just riding in the wake of Joyce. Goldstein definitely did his research, but I'm just not sure there was much of a story to tell here. If I could do it all over again, I'd skip this one and read one of the books from the four authors that I haven't gotten around to yet.

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was FASCINATING. I hadn't thought about just how closely the lives of my favorite modernists were intertwined. I forget that these authors were real people with lives and I really appreciated how this book provided me with an overarching insight into them. There was obviously so much research put into the book because every page quotes from a myriad of letters and diary entries from not only Woolf, Eliot, Lawrence, and Forster, but so many of their other contemporaries and those important to their lives. I'm heartbroken for the sufferings they all went through but also awed by the literary giants that they are.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had the potential to be very interesting (subject matter) but felt poorly written-- boring and seemed quiet a slog to get through. An awful lot of detail paid to trifles like exact dates of telegrams or letter sent from write to publisher and vice versa.

[Sophia Walls · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The writer was able to interweave facts and quotations about the writers whilst also presenting these in a way that was engaging to the reader and told a story about their inner worlds. It was like following the journey of four characters in a fiction novel, except these characters were very much real people. Impressively, the author managed to get inside the minds of all four writers and one could very vividly imagine their lives and characters and thoughts. Something which I had not particularly appreciated before was how interconnected all these writers were with one another. It was interesting to see quotations from each of their diaries about each other and their meetings and encounters and impressions of one another. Typically, one would read a biography on only one writer, but what this author has done extremely well is reveal the intersection points of the lives and inner turmoil of all four writers. I particularly enjoyed how the author flitted between the different writers from chapter to chapter such that you could compare how all the writers were feeling and what they were doing around the same instances in time. A lot of the same internal struggles one could see mirrored across all four writers. It seems that what is common to all four writers is their ability to connect with themselves and their surroundings, most of them keeping diaries or notes on the general day. From this book, one could see how each of the works of these writers stemmed from each of their own challenges and plights, driving them to keep getting closer and closer to blurring the boundary between their words and their internal worlds.

Most of all, the book gave a great sense of what it was like to be a writer around 1922, including many of the relations the writers had with their publishers and potential rivalries and jealousies as they published book reviews on each other’s books in various magazines. Notably, the amount of self-doubt and self-pressure to write more books was not something I thought many of these writers would feel. I would have liked to read more about the struggles of Virginia Woolf writing as a woman during this time. The book highlights subtle differences, for example, she questions herself a lot more than the other male writers mentioned in this book, and she is also paid less than what some of her male contemporaries are paid. However, there is not really any mention of the plight of the female writer around 1922 and any judgment Virginia may have received simply because she was a woman writer.

[Tony Lawrence]

There are a few structural problems with this (more later, with apologies), but I enjoyed it for the attempt to summarise 4 writer’s lives and events of a significant year and the birth of a new literary movement at a point in time. Juggling all these elements was a challenge for me, so I applaud Goldstein’s effort and skill. It was a fascinating glimpse into the various challenges in these authors' lives, their mental & physical health and writers block, including the gestation of The Waste Land (T.S. ‘Tom’ Elliot), E.M. ’Morgan’ Forster's grief and creating a novel out of his ‘India fragments’, and of course Virginia Woolf, the glue that linked the others together (excepting D.H.Lawrence, see below), turning Clarissa and a dinner party reference in a previous book into 'Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street', and thence a whole modernist book. I especially enjoyed the evolution of Proust (‘Remembrance’) and Joyce (Ulysses), and how these masterpieces changed the literary landscape, after which all books would be compared and measured, if not judged.

Minor gripes; (1) I would have liked more asides and explanations from Goldstein on the modernist style, mostly explained through comments from the featured authors themselves as they read Proust and Joyce. This context may or may not include the impact of the First World War and subsequent social movements and flu epidemics, despite none of the above-named being active combatants. I am reminded of George Orwell’s 'Coming Up For Air’, the loss of innocence, peace of mind, and certainties in the post-war, to become the interwar, period. I am reading Woolf’s "Jacob’s Room", in final edit and published in 1922, and an early example of her new ‘method’ before Mrs.Dalloway; and (2) I don’t think Lawrence fitted alongside Woolf, Forster, and Eliot as he didn’t seem to mix in the same London literary circles and exchange of ideas. That said, he spent the whole year travelling (Italy/Ceylon/Australia/USA), and we got to hear about the obscenity trials, with reference to his books and Ulysses.

[Jarrett Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read for those interested in Modernist English literature or the Bloomsbury set. Bill Goldstein demonstrates amazing prowess as a literary historian, presenting a text that weaves together narratives of four of the most acclaimed writers of the early twentieth century. To really understand this book and its importance, readers should come to it with a least a slim understanding of these writers--Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and E. M. Forster--the major events of their lives, and their works. Of course, you could start with this text then seek out these writers' books (I've never read anything by Lawrence, but now I have him on my TBR) but the more knowledge you have about them, the era, and the literati on both sides of the Atlantic circa 1922, the richer your reading experience will be.

One's affinity for each individual narrative will depend on one's affinity for a particular author. Myself, I was much more interested in learning more about Woolf and Forster, although Lawrence's maverick sensibilities are hard to ignore. For better or worse, the literary and publishing world of 1922 was vastly different from the one today. The World Broke in Two is the type of book that renews my faith in literature to move the world. And it makes me want to be a better writer.