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Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
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.
"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.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 14, 2020
313 people are currently reading
7545 people want to read
About the author
Francesca Wade
19 books114 followersFrancesca Wade has written for publications including the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and Prospect. She is editor of The White Review and a winner of the Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Prize. She lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 321 reviews
February 25, 2021
One of my ideal ways of spending a morning is listening to an audiobook of my favourite novel “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf while I'm walking or riding on a bus around London. There's an added pleasure of experiencing the text while travelling around the streets that Woolf herself walked while observing the people and shop windows (an activity she referred to as “street haunting”). For the past several months of the pandemic this “haunting” has taken on a different meaning whenever I walk through central London because it's mostly deserted. Naturally, I've had a long fascination with Woolf and the Bloomsbury group so I've previously made a pilgrimage to Monk's House, followed the trail of “Mrs Dalloway” and I like to musingly wander by Woolf's statue in Tavistock Square where she had a longterm residence. However, until picking up Francesca Wade's fascinating and creatively-written group biography “Square Haunting” I wasn't aware of Mecklenburgh Square which exists on the edge of Bloomsbury.
It's bold that Wade begins her book with the partial destruction of the square she's writing about. In 1939 Virginia and Leonard took up a lease at 37 Mecklenburgh Square after the noise of nearby construction work at Tavistock Square got to be too much for their nerves. This book is partly about their short time at this residence which was bombed in a German air raid in 1940. Luckily the Woolfs weren't in the building when the bomb hit, but Virginia had to dig through the rubble to save her diaries. Wade's book is also about the (sometimes intersecting) lives, careers and interests of four other trailblazing female academics and writers who also resided in this square at different periods of time during the early 20th century. These accounts are skilfully organized in a way that tunnels back through not only through their personal histories but how they contributed to the intellectual and political battle for gender equality.
Read my full review of Square Haunting by Francesca Wade on LonesomeReader
It's bold that Wade begins her book with the partial destruction of the square she's writing about. In 1939 Virginia and Leonard took up a lease at 37 Mecklenburgh Square after the noise of nearby construction work at Tavistock Square got to be too much for their nerves. This book is partly about their short time at this residence which was bombed in a German air raid in 1940. Luckily the Woolfs weren't in the building when the bomb hit, but Virginia had to dig through the rubble to save her diaries. Wade's book is also about the (sometimes intersecting) lives, careers and interests of four other trailblazing female academics and writers who also resided in this square at different periods of time during the early 20th century. These accounts are skilfully organized in a way that tunnels back through not only through their personal histories but how they contributed to the intellectual and political battle for gender equality.
Read my full review of Square Haunting by Francesca Wade on LonesomeReader
December 19, 2019
This is essentially a set of mini biographies of five extraordinary women in the first half of the twentieth century. The conceit of the book is that they are bound by addresses in Mecklenburg Square, Bloomsbury, but in many cases the address is irrelevant: Jane Harrison, for example, a 'foremother' to classicists, doesn't even move there till most of her career is over.
I also felt that the section on Virginia Woolf is too repetitive of too much that has been written about her before. The most compelling portraits for me are those of Hilda Doolittle, known as HD, and Dorothy Sayers - and the connections between them are fascinating. The concept of 'a room of one's own' is used throughout to highlight the struggles and costs of female independence, but that room could just as easily be in an Oxbridge college as in Bloomsbury, perhaps.
So I wasn't entirely convinced by the Bloomsbury connection as a raison d'etre for the book - but the lives are interesting introductions to women who challenged and overturned the status quo of their times.
Thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.
I also felt that the section on Virginia Woolf is too repetitive of too much that has been written about her before. The most compelling portraits for me are those of Hilda Doolittle, known as HD, and Dorothy Sayers - and the connections between them are fascinating. The concept of 'a room of one's own' is used throughout to highlight the struggles and costs of female independence, but that room could just as easily be in an Oxbridge college as in Bloomsbury, perhaps.
So I wasn't entirely convinced by the Bloomsbury connection as a raison d'etre for the book - but the lives are interesting introductions to women who challenged and overturned the status quo of their times.
Thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.
February 18, 2022
This book focuses on five women who all lived in Mecklenberg Square in London at various points between the wars. The link (apart from the Square and the fact they are all middle class) is the theme of female autonomy and there is a Room of One’s Own thread running through it. There are two academics: the historian Eileen Power and the classicist Jane Harrison. The poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle (HD). Novelist and writer Dorothy L Sayers. Finally and inevitably Virginia Woolf. The Square is close to the British Museum and at times all of them used the Reading Room there. The title is taken from a 1925 diary entry by Woolf when she talks about the joys of “street sauntering and square haunting”. They didn’t all live there at the same time and they didn’t know each other well, although some were acquainted. Wade tells a story about Woolf eating biscuits in the kitchen at one of Power’s parties. Multiple biographies are quite the thing these days, but Wade does have a particular focus, which she tends to stick to: autonomy, ‘the right to talk, walk, and write freely, to live invigorating lives’.
I was particularly interested in the section on Eileen Power, I have admired her historical work since the 1970s.
“I am extremely jubilant at present, because I have, after much travail & tribulation, found a charming half-house in Mecklenburgh Square, looking on to an enormous garden of trees & I hope to move in at the end of term. I have found a convenient friend to share it, of the sort who is never there except on weekends, when I am often away. My idea of life is to have enormous quantities of friends but to live alone. And I do not know whether Girton or the study of medieval nunneries did more to convince me that I was not born to live in a community!”
Power’s work is much underrated and she comes across as an impressive character.
The links are tenuous, although each essay (which is effectively what they are) has some interest in its own right. Wade sums up her aims thus:
“These chapters capture each woman in a moment of transition, of hope tempered by uncertainty, as she left behind a version of herself in the home or community she was abandoning, and sought to reinvent her life in a new place. . . . During the time all these women spent there . . . they produced groundbreaking writing, initiated radical collaboration, started (and ended) significant relationships and thought deeply about their values and ambitions.”
Wade also draws links between some of the women:
“Harrison’s work gave Woolf a new, subversive model of history which informed all her subsequent novels and essays: one whose revelations offered powerful ‘mothers’ for women to ‘think back through.’ And which revealed as man-made—and flimsy—the construct on which patriarchal society rests.”
I also discovered that Mary Beard has written a biography of Harrison, so I will be looking out for that.
Whilst I think there are issues with the concept of this, for me, there was enough here to maintain interest.
I was particularly interested in the section on Eileen Power, I have admired her historical work since the 1970s.
“I am extremely jubilant at present, because I have, after much travail & tribulation, found a charming half-house in Mecklenburgh Square, looking on to an enormous garden of trees & I hope to move in at the end of term. I have found a convenient friend to share it, of the sort who is never there except on weekends, when I am often away. My idea of life is to have enormous quantities of friends but to live alone. And I do not know whether Girton or the study of medieval nunneries did more to convince me that I was not born to live in a community!”
Power’s work is much underrated and she comes across as an impressive character.
The links are tenuous, although each essay (which is effectively what they are) has some interest in its own right. Wade sums up her aims thus:
“These chapters capture each woman in a moment of transition, of hope tempered by uncertainty, as she left behind a version of herself in the home or community she was abandoning, and sought to reinvent her life in a new place. . . . During the time all these women spent there . . . they produced groundbreaking writing, initiated radical collaboration, started (and ended) significant relationships and thought deeply about their values and ambitions.”
Wade also draws links between some of the women:
“Harrison’s work gave Woolf a new, subversive model of history which informed all her subsequent novels and essays: one whose revelations offered powerful ‘mothers’ for women to ‘think back through.’ And which revealed as man-made—and flimsy—the construct on which patriarchal society rests.”
I also discovered that Mary Beard has written a biography of Harrison, so I will be looking out for that.
Whilst I think there are issues with the concept of this, for me, there was enough here to maintain interest.
November 3, 2022
This certainly made for a fulfilling, thought-provoking read about five literary women, those being Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison and Eileen Power. These women, all at some point resided in Mecklenburgh Square in London, where we learn about their lives, and what they did and achieved with the time spent here, which was during and between the wars.
What is marvellous about all of these women is they defied what was expected of them as women, and they pursued their talents regardless, kicking down those social boundaries and gender norms. Woolf, I am very familiar with, and I have enjoyed reading about her life, and reading her fiction works. I was unfamiliar with Harrison and Power, unfortunately, but this book has encouraged me to find out more about these inspirational women.
I loved learning how living in Mecklenburgh Square had such a profound impact on the lives of these five women, and how events that took place, might never have happened if things were just slightly different.
Wade has written this absorbing text in a way so we can all enjoy and understand just how essential these women were, and still are, today.
What is marvellous about all of these women is they defied what was expected of them as women, and they pursued their talents regardless, kicking down those social boundaries and gender norms. Woolf, I am very familiar with, and I have enjoyed reading about her life, and reading her fiction works. I was unfamiliar with Harrison and Power, unfortunately, but this book has encouraged me to find out more about these inspirational women.
I loved learning how living in Mecklenburgh Square had such a profound impact on the lives of these five women, and how events that took place, might never have happened if things were just slightly different.
Wade has written this absorbing text in a way so we can all enjoy and understand just how essential these women were, and still are, today.
November 26, 2022
I was never convinced that the common denominator of Mecklenburg Square was enough to unite five mini-biographies into a cohesive work. Having finished Square Haunting, I'm still not certain that Mecklenburgh Square represents what its meant to, or that the author stuck to her guns in portraying it as this as some transformative address (which was for the best). What I do know is that in the hands of Francesca Wade the stories of these five women--H. D, Dorothy L. Sayers, Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf--feel like they belong between the covers of the same book. The subtler connections, the parallels and intersections--the women were more or less contemporaries--are what make it so fascinating. Virginia Woolf admired Jane Harrison and attended her funeral, and was a guest at parties hosted by Eileen Power. H. D. and Sayers both had children out of wedlock, and had John Cournos in common as a friend, not to mention that at different times they lived in literally the same flat. I had never heard of Jane Harrison or Eileen Power, but they were no less interesting to read about. The same themes resurface in each section, but every now and then the writing takes an unexpected yet welcome turn and you find yourself surrounded hy Russian refugees, or caught up in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Virginia Woolf was the least interesting of the bunch, for once!
September 29, 2020
In reality, this book contains the potted biographies of five women, who all – at some point or another – lived in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury. Often this is for a fairly short period, or after their main work has been completed, but it is an interesting hook on which to hang the lives of these women. Those included in the book are Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) a modernist poet, Dorothy L. Sayers (of Lord Peter Wimsey fame), classicist, Jane Harrison, the economic historian, Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf.
I knew a fair bit about Sayers and, of course, much has been written about Virginia Woolf, so I think my interest was piqued more by the women I was less familiar with. Hilda Doolittle was, for me, an interesting character. I also enjoyed the section on Dorothy L. Sayers, whose detective novels I love. Even though I knew much of the information relating to Woolf, I must admit that I am always fascinated by her and so, overall, I really enjoyed this book. It also made me appreciate the fight that women have had to find equality in education and that ‘room of their own,’ in which to turn away from the domestic and pursue their own interests.
I knew a fair bit about Sayers and, of course, much has been written about Virginia Woolf, so I think my interest was piqued more by the women I was less familiar with. Hilda Doolittle was, for me, an interesting character. I also enjoyed the section on Dorothy L. Sayers, whose detective novels I love. Even though I knew much of the information relating to Woolf, I must admit that I am always fascinated by her and so, overall, I really enjoyed this book. It also made me appreciate the fight that women have had to find equality in education and that ‘room of their own,’ in which to turn away from the domestic and pursue their own interests.
October 13, 2020
I am absolutely loving SQUARE HAUNTING by Francesca Wade. You may have heard me mention it on my recent Instagram Live. It’s a fascinating story of a square in London and five women who lived there—writers Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Sayers, poet H.D., historian Eileen Power, and classicist Jane Harrison. It is a beautiful group biography and a moving exploration of the importance of place that will make you explore London’s leafy squares and their blue plaques with fresh eyes. Highly recommended to history buffs, fans of these women and their work, London armchair travelers, and readers fascinated with the interwar years. It’s beautifully written and researched, and the book is a promising debut.
April 26, 2020
This book is so close to getting five stars, and yet I can't quite bring myself to do it! I'm conflicted! On the one hand: Wade is a wonderful writer who provides some lovely insight, and the five women she’ is writing about are absolutely fascinating. I loved spending time with them through Wade’s writing.
On the other hand: I remain unsure of whether this book actually works. I’m not sure its central conceit--all of these women lived in the same neighbourhood, though not at the same time, and Wade is focusing on each one’s time there, her feelings about her place in the world as a woman, and her relationship with London--completely comes together. Perhaps the scope is too ambitious, but at the same time, you could sometimes see Wade contorting things so that they’ll fit. I found the parallels she drew kind of a stretch at times,even while I was appreciating her profound appreciation for trailblazing women.
Still, the most frustrating thing about the book was that I wanted more about these women’s lives before/after Mecklenburg Square. Honestly, I would have preferred if she’d written five full biographies (they could even be on the short side!) and called the the Mecklenburg Square Quintet or something like that. Choosing to focus just on their lives when they lived in a particular area (and most of them lived there for only a few years or even less) meant that so much gets left out.
That need can be filled by reading dedicated biographies of each woman (which I intend to do), so another part of me almost wishes that Wade had dedicated less of her book to biographical information and more to the women's inner lives, their feelings about their gender and their relationship to the world, their dreams of a better future--because those are the places where Wade really shines. I know that the biographical stuff is necessary to give context to everything else, but in having to include it, Wade is stuck in a too-much or too-little situation. As five biographies, this book does not satisfy. As an exploration of what it was like to be a talented and ambitious female writer in pre-WWII London, it does a much better job and yet I wanted more.
I was also struck again and again by the ways that relationships with other women were so central to the survival and professional flourishing of the five. Some of these women had good, positive relationships with men (some of them even had happy marriages!), but all of them were betrayed by men at one point or another. Andall of them have some profound need that is met by women or groups of women: some of them fell in love with women, some of them were mentored by or mentored other women, some of them had the wonderful opportunity to live and work in the environment of women’s colleges, others were rescued by other women or encouraged by other women in a time of great need. This is beautiful to me, and reminds me of the importance of female relationships and solidarity.
The book gave me loads to think about and I enjoyed it all. There are so many people and things that I was tantalizingly introduced to in this book, and now I want to research and find out more about them all. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in women's history, female writers, pre-WWII London, and interesting people in general. The wonderful things about this book (and there are many) are what make my conflicted feelings so frustrating: this book is so close to being truly great.
On the other hand: I remain unsure of whether this book actually works. I’m not sure its central conceit--all of these women lived in the same neighbourhood, though not at the same time, and Wade is focusing on each one’s time there, her feelings about her place in the world as a woman, and her relationship with London--completely comes together. Perhaps the scope is too ambitious, but at the same time, you could sometimes see Wade contorting things so that they’ll fit. I found the parallels she drew kind of a stretch at times,even while I was appreciating her profound appreciation for trailblazing women.
Still, the most frustrating thing about the book was that I wanted more about these women’s lives before/after Mecklenburg Square. Honestly, I would have preferred if she’d written five full biographies (they could even be on the short side!) and called the the Mecklenburg Square Quintet or something like that. Choosing to focus just on their lives when they lived in a particular area (and most of them lived there for only a few years or even less) meant that so much gets left out.
That need can be filled by reading dedicated biographies of each woman (which I intend to do), so another part of me almost wishes that Wade had dedicated less of her book to biographical information and more to the women's inner lives, their feelings about their gender and their relationship to the world, their dreams of a better future--because those are the places where Wade really shines. I know that the biographical stuff is necessary to give context to everything else, but in having to include it, Wade is stuck in a too-much or too-little situation. As five biographies, this book does not satisfy. As an exploration of what it was like to be a talented and ambitious female writer in pre-WWII London, it does a much better job and yet I wanted more.
I was also struck again and again by the ways that relationships with other women were so central to the survival and professional flourishing of the five. Some of these women had good, positive relationships with men (some of them even had happy marriages!), but all of them were betrayed by men at one point or another. Andall of them have some profound need that is met by women or groups of women: some of them fell in love with women, some of them were mentored by or mentored other women, some of them had the wonderful opportunity to live and work in the environment of women’s colleges, others were rescued by other women or encouraged by other women in a time of great need. This is beautiful to me, and reminds me of the importance of female relationships and solidarity.
The book gave me loads to think about and I enjoyed it all. There are so many people and things that I was tantalizingly introduced to in this book, and now I want to research and find out more about them all. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in women's history, female writers, pre-WWII London, and interesting people in general. The wonderful things about this book (and there are many) are what make my conflicted feelings so frustrating: this book is so close to being truly great.
July 27, 2022
Going to London is a fall tradition for my sister and I. We stay in a small hotel on Gower St and often wander over to Russell Square for morning coffee. (Russell, Mecklenburgh Squares, the British Museum and the British Library are all in short walking distance and we love just being in this in the area). I think that was part of the reason I was so enchanted by this book. It is non-fiction and a little academic feeling at times but the author manages to breath such life into these five women. I thought I might skim some to get to the last section about Virginia Woolf but I found instead that the early chapters about women I knew so little of were actually the most engaging.
The five women she discusses lived for a time in Mecklenburgh Square between the World Wars and pursued lives and careers of writing and thought that were largely unavailable to women at this time. Each woman had to fight against the conventions of the day and there were often missteps along the way. There is really great history woven in these pages and so much about writing and the importance of "a room of ones own.". Each story was inspiring and engaging. I came away with a new appreciation for the history, architecture and environment and society--the rubbing up of the these literary figures among each other, many met at parties or knew of each other through their writings and correspondence.
A history/biography book that is well worth the time and was a great read. I would recommend it for readers and writers alike.
I listened to parts on the audio furnished on the free library apt Hoopla. It was beautifully narrated by Corrie James and added much to this reading. I also had the print which has some great photos of the women and the parts of London discussed and it added much as well to this great reading experience.
The five women she discusses lived for a time in Mecklenburgh Square between the World Wars and pursued lives and careers of writing and thought that were largely unavailable to women at this time. Each woman had to fight against the conventions of the day and there were often missteps along the way. There is really great history woven in these pages and so much about writing and the importance of "a room of ones own.". Each story was inspiring and engaging. I came away with a new appreciation for the history, architecture and environment and society--the rubbing up of the these literary figures among each other, many met at parties or knew of each other through their writings and correspondence.
A history/biography book that is well worth the time and was a great read. I would recommend it for readers and writers alike.
I listened to parts on the audio furnished on the free library apt Hoopla. It was beautifully narrated by Corrie James and added much to this reading. I also had the print which has some great photos of the women and the parts of London discussed and it added much as well to this great reading experience.
March 24, 2021
Five mini biographies of female writers who all lived in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury at some time during their careers. The writers are H.D., Dorothy L. Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf. They did not all live there at the same time but there is some cross-over in their biogs. I'm only familiar with Sayers and Woolf and I found some of the other chapters didn't hold my attention as much as they could have, so I liked it but I didn't love it. It's well written, so others will feel differently towards it I'm sure.
April 5, 2021
The portrait of five writers who struggled to carve out their intellectual lives in a male-dominated culture, all of whom lived in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square at some point between the two World Wars. While they didn't necessarily live there at the same time, the connections between them through friends, colleagues, and lovers binds them into a common story. These are not full biographies, but detailed sketches of the women's careers and their troubled relationships with men and the social, political, and professional hierarchies they have to fight against. I especially liked the portrait of Eileen Power, a writer I did not know going into the book.
December 7, 2021
An absorbing, thoughtful group biography of sorts, though the subjects had only glancing interaction or overlap and each gets her own chapter. The writers H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Dorothy Sayers, and Virginia Woolf, as well as the classicist Jane Harrison and the historian Eileen Power all happened to live for some portion of time during and between the wars in Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury. This linkage proves the impetus for Wade to explore how each woman grappled with the tensions and challenges of pursuing her work and forming relationships in the face of patriarchal societal structures.
I especially enjoyed the chapters on Dorothy Sayers and Eileen Power, as well as the sometimes tenuous, often insightful and sensitive connections that the author made. Beautifully researched with a good index (so few books seem to have these lately) and lovely endnotes too (though I would have liked some indication within the text that a point was endnoted). If I had a particular wish, it would be for a more diverse lens - I was very interested in Power’s work to destabilize Eurocentrism, she was quite amazing, and there was some interesting exploration of Woolf’s rather weird attitude to servants - but I did really feel the fact that I was reading about a very narrow, very apparently white milieu of a certain class.
I especially enjoyed the chapters on Dorothy Sayers and Eileen Power, as well as the sometimes tenuous, often insightful and sensitive connections that the author made. Beautifully researched with a good index (so few books seem to have these lately) and lovely endnotes too (though I would have liked some indication within the text that a point was endnoted). If I had a particular wish, it would be for a more diverse lens - I was very interested in Power’s work to destabilize Eurocentrism, she was quite amazing, and there was some interesting exploration of Woolf’s rather weird attitude to servants - but I did really feel the fact that I was reading about a very narrow, very apparently white milieu of a certain class.
March 13, 2020
These five women...all pushed the boundaries of scholarship, of literary form, of societal norms: they refused to let their gender hold them back, but were determined to find a different way of living, one in which their creative work would take precedence.~ Francesca Wade, Square Haunting
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade links writers H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power, and Jane Ellen Harrison through their time residing in London's Mecklenburgh Square. They were born in the late 19th c. and by full adulthood saw a changed world that allowed women to vote and the opening of professions to women.They defied the narrow role assigned to women to become masters of their craft.
Each woman's life and career is illuminated through their shared experience in one place. Their time in Mecklenburgh Square was pivotal to their development.
I was familiar with Woolf, knew the work of Sayers and a bit about H.D., but Power and Harrison were unfamiliar. How sad! Harrison broke through the gender barrier to become a professional scholar. Her research impacted the Imagist writers and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Power was a fashionable and attractive academic of economics. I realized that I had read her book Medieval People several times!
I was fascinated by these women and their stories. Wade delivers a compelling narrative that combines insight and significance and good story-telling.
...real freedom entails the ability to live on one's own terms, not to allow one's identity to be proscribed or limited by anyone else.~ from Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade links writers H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power, and Jane Ellen Harrison through their time residing in London's Mecklenburgh Square. They were born in the late 19th c. and by full adulthood saw a changed world that allowed women to vote and the opening of professions to women.They defied the narrow role assigned to women to become masters of their craft.
Each woman's life and career is illuminated through their shared experience in one place. Their time in Mecklenburgh Square was pivotal to their development.
I was familiar with Woolf, knew the work of Sayers and a bit about H.D., but Power and Harrison were unfamiliar. How sad! Harrison broke through the gender barrier to become a professional scholar. Her research impacted the Imagist writers and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Power was a fashionable and attractive academic of economics. I realized that I had read her book Medieval People several times!
I was fascinated by these women and their stories. Wade delivers a compelling narrative that combines insight and significance and good story-telling.
...real freedom entails the ability to live on one's own terms, not to allow one's identity to be proscribed or limited by anyone else.~ from Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
April 27, 2021
3.5 thoughts soon.
November 25, 2023
Square Haunting is a study of Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London. I imagined a detailed historical piece of writing reminiscent of Olusoga's "A House Through Time", a book exploring the social climate and history of this famous square. In fact, the book is little more than an opportunity to re-hash facts on five significant women writers. The connections to the square are mainly tangential: H.D. lived there for two years, Sayers for one year, Harrison for two years, Powers for almost nineteen years, and Woolf for one year, of which half the time was spent away in Monk's House, East Sussex. Most have little connection with the square. And though Wade does her best to weave comparisons between them, as intellectual women, little connects them historically to one another.
H.D. starts the book and the writing here is typical of what follows. Biographical interest in H.D. burst forth in the 1980s with the work of Robinson (1982) and Guest (1985). These two books were full length enquiries into H.D. as a writer of poetry and novels. In The Life and Work of an American Poet, Robinson has six substantial pages on Meckleburgh Square. In Herself Defined, Guest devotes a sixteen page chapter to this period in H.D.'s life. A reader would expect the sixty pages that Wade devotes to be a huge advance on these two main biographers. The opposite is the case for though Wade writes eloquently -- and she certainly does -- her H.D. chapter is a resume of H.D.s life. A lot of details are drawn from H.D.'s novel Bid Me to Live, but there is nothing new, and Wade is so out of touch with H.D's poetical methods that she misses the obvious. H.D. was fascinated with Lawrence, Rico in her novel, because David Herbert (Lawrence) as D.H. is H.D. in the mirror, a male reversal of the female psyche. Animus to Anima in Her-meticism.
In her H.D. chapter, Wade tells the reader that H.D. was connected to Pound who was preoccupied with his key phrase "Make it new". Surprise, surprise, in her chapter on Power, Wade also connects Powers to a cultural climate in which Pound was urging artists to "Make it new". Square Haunting is far from a depth analysis of the cultural climate of Meckleburgh Square: in spite of its florid style, it relies on a sort of intellectual shorthand. The lives of H.D. and Harrison at Meckleborough did not overlap in real life, were separated by eight years, but they did intellectually: the revolutionary research by Harrison into Greek religion influenced both H.D.'s Sea Garden and Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos. As Pound remarked, the artist gathers in what is in the air. If only the book had explored this rather than Bloomsbury fog.
Really, Square Haunting cobbles together five mini-biographies via a dubious link. Out of the five chapters, the highlight is the chapter on Eileen Power. Here, wade does a sterling job of bringing a neglected voice onto the stage, and she writes emotionally and intelligently. The worst chapter is the chapter on Woolf. The chapter is padded out with excursions to East Sussex where Woolf considers the Women's Institute. What has this to do with Meckleburgh Square? Probably, as much as H.D's analysis with Freud sixteen years after she left Meckleburgh Square.
The methodology of this book is flawed. It is like writing about Doreen Lawrence, Emma Thompson, and Annie Lennox, race, theatre, and green activism, because they all shop at Marks & Spencer.
H.D. starts the book and the writing here is typical of what follows. Biographical interest in H.D. burst forth in the 1980s with the work of Robinson (1982) and Guest (1985). These two books were full length enquiries into H.D. as a writer of poetry and novels. In The Life and Work of an American Poet, Robinson has six substantial pages on Meckleburgh Square. In Herself Defined, Guest devotes a sixteen page chapter to this period in H.D.'s life. A reader would expect the sixty pages that Wade devotes to be a huge advance on these two main biographers. The opposite is the case for though Wade writes eloquently -- and she certainly does -- her H.D. chapter is a resume of H.D.s life. A lot of details are drawn from H.D.'s novel Bid Me to Live, but there is nothing new, and Wade is so out of touch with H.D's poetical methods that she misses the obvious. H.D. was fascinated with Lawrence, Rico in her novel, because David Herbert (Lawrence) as D.H. is H.D. in the mirror, a male reversal of the female psyche. Animus to Anima in Her-meticism.
In her H.D. chapter, Wade tells the reader that H.D. was connected to Pound who was preoccupied with his key phrase "Make it new". Surprise, surprise, in her chapter on Power, Wade also connects Powers to a cultural climate in which Pound was urging artists to "Make it new". Square Haunting is far from a depth analysis of the cultural climate of Meckleburgh Square: in spite of its florid style, it relies on a sort of intellectual shorthand. The lives of H.D. and Harrison at Meckleborough did not overlap in real life, were separated by eight years, but they did intellectually: the revolutionary research by Harrison into Greek religion influenced both H.D.'s Sea Garden and Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos. As Pound remarked, the artist gathers in what is in the air. If only the book had explored this rather than Bloomsbury fog.
Really, Square Haunting cobbles together five mini-biographies via a dubious link. Out of the five chapters, the highlight is the chapter on Eileen Power. Here, wade does a sterling job of bringing a neglected voice onto the stage, and she writes emotionally and intelligently. The worst chapter is the chapter on Woolf. The chapter is padded out with excursions to East Sussex where Woolf considers the Women's Institute. What has this to do with Meckleburgh Square? Probably, as much as H.D's analysis with Freud sixteen years after she left Meckleburgh Square.
The methodology of this book is flawed. It is like writing about Doreen Lawrence, Emma Thompson, and Annie Lennox, race, theatre, and green activism, because they all shop at Marks & Spencer.
April 13, 2023
An engaging and satisfying return to Bloomsbury between the wars, focused on five distinctive women - one of whom I knew a lot about (Woolf), two of whom I knew a little about (Eileen Power and Dorothy L Sayers) and two I had never heard of (Jane Harrison and H.D.). Wade has done an enormous amount of reading and research in order to reconstruct their intersecting lives in one London square between 1918 and 1940, although she wears it pretty lightly. The desire to map common ideas and shared ideals felt a little reductive at times, but I appreciated the project overall and will definitely read more from her.
August 17, 2020
Five interesting women, with tangential links, but using Mecklenberg Square to link them just isn't cohesive.
I would rate the Dorothy L Sayers and Eileen Power chapters as 4* and I very much enjoyed them, however, they seemed appetisers to finding out more. I struggled through the HD chapter, Jane Harrison perhaps should have been the first chapter. As for Virginia Woolf - I feel her inclusion is a marketing gimmick for the book as the author could never hope to cover her in any depth here. Perhaps she should have been left to drift in and out of the other women's lives and experiences without having a Chapter of her own.
I would rate the Dorothy L Sayers and Eileen Power chapters as 4* and I very much enjoyed them, however, they seemed appetisers to finding out more. I struggled through the HD chapter, Jane Harrison perhaps should have been the first chapter. As for Virginia Woolf - I feel her inclusion is a marketing gimmick for the book as the author could never hope to cover her in any depth here. Perhaps she should have been left to drift in and out of the other women's lives and experiences without having a Chapter of her own.
November 15, 2024
{3.5 stars}
Francesca Wade covers the lives of five women who at one time or another lived at the same address in London.
I am not sure what to make of this, in how it told the lives of these women, this was disjointed and felt like it was trying to be more than one book. This aside, it was amazing to read what these women achieved (professionally and personally), breaking the boundaries of their gender in how they chose to live whilst voicing social and political views.
Of the five I know some poetry of Hilda Doolittle (H.D) and works by Virginia Woolf. Dorothy L Sayers I’ve heard of (until I read this, I hadn’t realised she wrote more than crime fiction), and the last two were new to me – Jane Harrison (classicist) and Eileen Power (economic historian).
And although this book didn’t have the wow!!! factor of what these women achieved, I still enjoyed it for being an interesting and informative read.
Francesca Wade covers the lives of five women who at one time or another lived at the same address in London.
I am not sure what to make of this, in how it told the lives of these women, this was disjointed and felt like it was trying to be more than one book. This aside, it was amazing to read what these women achieved (professionally and personally), breaking the boundaries of their gender in how they chose to live whilst voicing social and political views.
Of the five I know some poetry of Hilda Doolittle (H.D) and works by Virginia Woolf. Dorothy L Sayers I’ve heard of (until I read this, I hadn’t realised she wrote more than crime fiction), and the last two were new to me – Jane Harrison (classicist) and Eileen Power (economic historian).
And although this book didn’t have the wow!!! factor of what these women achieved, I still enjoyed it for being an interesting and informative read.
July 10, 2021
A wonderful read for anyone with an interest in Bloomsbury and/or feminist history and/or LGB history and/or London psychogeography and/or the intersections thereof. Francesca Wade looks at five women who lived in Bloomsbury’s Mecklenburgh Square at various points in the first half of the twentieth century - three literary (H.D., Dorothy L. Sayers and Virginia Woolf) and two academic (Eileen Power and Jane Harrison.)
The portraits of these notable women are written with warmth and curiosity (and larded with some nice gossipy titbits, don’t judge me), bringing their personalities and work to life, situating them in their homes and local networks. This is not to domesticise these women - they weren’t just impressive thinkers but very much doers - but it looks at where and how they worked, in terms of home life, London life, and the community of artists, authors, publishers and campaigners of that time. Francesca Wade really captures how interconnected these strands were, and the alternative community that was open to women who wanted / needed to be useful and creative, rather than decorative household fixtures.
The book spans the early twentieth century mainly, focusing on the artistic eruption of interwar years, the aftermath of WW1 and the horror of WW2 - she draws on contemporary accounts to depict vividly London under the Blitz and the destruction of part of Mecklenburgh Square in particular, the Woolfs picking through the rubble to see what could be salvaged from their home. Wade captures both the horrific immediacy of nightly bombing raids and their wider ripples, socially and psychologically; also the curious tension and freedom of the preceding years of uneasy peace, rapidly changing social conditions, new art forms, and all that went with that.
I liked how Wade foregrounds the political aspect of Bloomsbury. Rather than an ivory tower of writers and artists theorising in drawing rooms, she describes a community that was very much about campaigning, activism and social justice, very politicised, with a continued discussion about the relationship between art, literature, politics and current social issues. For me it also really underlined the need for community, in art and activism. These were all women who were outside the establishment despite the varying degrees of privilege they were born into - none fitted into the academic or literary canon, or conformed to the traditional life-route of middle class women, and had to carve their own way. The mutual support from and deep friendships with other women that gave them the encouragement and stimulation to work, beyond the usual narrative of supportive husbands, a good income and a room of one’s own was a real pleasure to read.
The final chapter is quite melancholy. Woolf and Sayers have never gone out print, but H.D. had to be revived by the Virago Press in the 1980s despite being huge in her time. Harrison and Power’s work was either taken to be that of male academics or forgotten, as must have been the lot of so many women in those fields then, but Wade highlights their influence on the thinking of the time, in Bloomsbury and more widely. An excellent work of women’s history, London history, early C20th cultural history, and a really enjoyable, engaging and inspiring read.
The portraits of these notable women are written with warmth and curiosity (and larded with some nice gossipy titbits, don’t judge me), bringing their personalities and work to life, situating them in their homes and local networks. This is not to domesticise these women - they weren’t just impressive thinkers but very much doers - but it looks at where and how they worked, in terms of home life, London life, and the community of artists, authors, publishers and campaigners of that time. Francesca Wade really captures how interconnected these strands were, and the alternative community that was open to women who wanted / needed to be useful and creative, rather than decorative household fixtures.
The book spans the early twentieth century mainly, focusing on the artistic eruption of interwar years, the aftermath of WW1 and the horror of WW2 - she draws on contemporary accounts to depict vividly London under the Blitz and the destruction of part of Mecklenburgh Square in particular, the Woolfs picking through the rubble to see what could be salvaged from their home. Wade captures both the horrific immediacy of nightly bombing raids and their wider ripples, socially and psychologically; also the curious tension and freedom of the preceding years of uneasy peace, rapidly changing social conditions, new art forms, and all that went with that.
I liked how Wade foregrounds the political aspect of Bloomsbury. Rather than an ivory tower of writers and artists theorising in drawing rooms, she describes a community that was very much about campaigning, activism and social justice, very politicised, with a continued discussion about the relationship between art, literature, politics and current social issues. For me it also really underlined the need for community, in art and activism. These were all women who were outside the establishment despite the varying degrees of privilege they were born into - none fitted into the academic or literary canon, or conformed to the traditional life-route of middle class women, and had to carve their own way. The mutual support from and deep friendships with other women that gave them the encouragement and stimulation to work, beyond the usual narrative of supportive husbands, a good income and a room of one’s own was a real pleasure to read.
The final chapter is quite melancholy. Woolf and Sayers have never gone out print, but H.D. had to be revived by the Virago Press in the 1980s despite being huge in her time. Harrison and Power’s work was either taken to be that of male academics or forgotten, as must have been the lot of so many women in those fields then, but Wade highlights their influence on the thinking of the time, in Bloomsbury and more widely. An excellent work of women’s history, London history, early C20th cultural history, and a really enjoyable, engaging and inspiring read.
February 8, 2021
This is a beautifully written and informative book, well worth a read. I especially enjoyed learning more about Eileen Power.
However, reclaiming women's history should be an intersectional exercise, and I do think the book falls down a little here. Any discussion of campaigners like Millicent Fawcett should at least *touch* on their pervasive racism. A throw-away reference to Marie Stopes notes approvingly that she was a campaigner for birth control - there is no mention of the fact that she was a prominent proponent of eugenics. Passages on Ezra Pound and his relationship with H.D resoundingly fail to mention that he was a fascist. Dorothy L Sayer's antisemitism is entirely ignored.
Meanwhile, I would have liked to have learned more about things like H.D's participation in the film Borderline with Paul Robeson, but this was barely mentioned.
In a book so focused on reclaiming lost histories and magnifying brilliant voices muffled by prejudice and oppression, I would have liked to see significantly more on the fact that these five women, all of whom were white and middle-class, had themselves vast amounts of privilege which they recognised and acted upon with varying levels of introspection and success.
However, reclaiming women's history should be an intersectional exercise, and I do think the book falls down a little here. Any discussion of campaigners like Millicent Fawcett should at least *touch* on their pervasive racism. A throw-away reference to Marie Stopes notes approvingly that she was a campaigner for birth control - there is no mention of the fact that she was a prominent proponent of eugenics. Passages on Ezra Pound and his relationship with H.D resoundingly fail to mention that he was a fascist. Dorothy L Sayer's antisemitism is entirely ignored.
Meanwhile, I would have liked to have learned more about things like H.D's participation in the film Borderline with Paul Robeson, but this was barely mentioned.
In a book so focused on reclaiming lost histories and magnifying brilliant voices muffled by prejudice and oppression, I would have liked to see significantly more on the fact that these five women, all of whom were white and middle-class, had themselves vast amounts of privilege which they recognised and acted upon with varying levels of introspection and success.
September 27, 2020
Five fascinating women. Using the Square to connect them is tenuous perhaps but I got such delight from reading about their lives and work. Wade is a conscientious but warm biographer.
July 4, 2020
Mini biographies of five women who all lived in Mecklenburg Square at disparate times. They were writers and historians, and all were unconventional. Three were known to me: H.D., Dorothy Sayers, and Virginia Woolf. Two were not: Jane Harrison and Eileen Power.
August 13, 2020
Francesca Wade embarks on a very interesting premise in this book, or should I say history, or should I say biography? I’m really not sure. Let me explain.
Wade’s book follows the path of five women novelists, the most well-known of them Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Sayers. Each of the five women share not only the fact that they are writers but also the fact that they spent some time living on Mecklenburgh Street. Fair enough I guess. They did not all live on the street at the same time, nor did they all have long-standing interpersonal relationships with one another. This book tries to tie them together geographically which is easy since they did spend time on the same street, but candidly, I for one struggle with the logic of the book.
Wade does present well researched material about each author when they lived there (as well as information about their lives pre and post living on Mecklenburgh. So is this a book of five micro biographies tied together by the street? Is the book a micro-history of a London street that had at least five people of note who once lived on it? I’m confused.
Certainly the authors are important in their own ways within the time period they lived on the street. Overall, however, the relationship and importance of the street is I fear little more than the fact that with any bus stop, with any tube station, or any desk at the reading room of the British Library famous people have also spend some time.
I am being somewhat harsh. Wade’s scholarship is not in question. I just don’t understand the concept and didn’t enjoy the methodology of the book.
Wade’s book follows the path of five women novelists, the most well-known of them Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Sayers. Each of the five women share not only the fact that they are writers but also the fact that they spent some time living on Mecklenburgh Street. Fair enough I guess. They did not all live on the street at the same time, nor did they all have long-standing interpersonal relationships with one another. This book tries to tie them together geographically which is easy since they did spend time on the same street, but candidly, I for one struggle with the logic of the book.
Wade does present well researched material about each author when they lived there (as well as information about their lives pre and post living on Mecklenburgh. So is this a book of five micro biographies tied together by the street? Is the book a micro-history of a London street that had at least five people of note who once lived on it? I’m confused.
Certainly the authors are important in their own ways within the time period they lived on the street. Overall, however, the relationship and importance of the street is I fear little more than the fact that with any bus stop, with any tube station, or any desk at the reading room of the British Library famous people have also spend some time.
I am being somewhat harsh. Wade’s scholarship is not in question. I just don’t understand the concept and didn’t enjoy the methodology of the book.
Read
August 7, 2021Picked this up primarily for the section covering H.D., the overall introduction to the book was very promising but the treatment of H.D.'s life was far too focused on the personal and anecdotal, and not enough on her writing so it actually seemed to undermine the supposed reason for discussing her, i.e. to foreground her beginnings as a ground-breaking author.
July 8, 2020
Review TK
September 25, 2021
An intriguing group biography of five women, residing in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square between the two world wars. Mecklenburgh Square turned out to be a radical address, forging new narratives for women.
Its literary heritage is rich: from Virginia Woolf to H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), a modernist poet, Jane Ellen Harrison, a classics don at Cambridge and Eileen Power, a social historian from the London School of Economics. I particularly liked the episode about Dorothy L. Sayers, famous for her (commercial) detective novels about Lord Peter Wimsey and a real rebel against the norms of femininity. She produced the quote that authors and books are 'part of her mental make-up'.
Wade examines how these women strived for intellectual freedom and the need of 'a room of one's own'. They specifically came to London to find this freedom, reading in The reading room of The British Library. Wade also highlights the impact of the war(s) on these five very different characters. Mecklenburgh Square is now a hub for international students and barely recognisable, but there is hope: Researchers have established (...) exactly where Virginia Woolf's study at 37 Mecklenburgh Square would have sat within the modern building. Now, that room is given over each year to a woman student. She arrives in London, nervous or excited about what the city may offer her as she embarks on a new course of study. She crosses Mecklenburgh Square, climbs the stairs, turns the key in the doors of her new home, and finds a book sitting on the desk, ready for her to turn the first page: 'A room of one's own'.
Its literary heritage is rich: from Virginia Woolf to H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), a modernist poet, Jane Ellen Harrison, a classics don at Cambridge and Eileen Power, a social historian from the London School of Economics. I particularly liked the episode about Dorothy L. Sayers, famous for her (commercial) detective novels about Lord Peter Wimsey and a real rebel against the norms of femininity. She produced the quote that authors and books are 'part of her mental make-up'.
Wade examines how these women strived for intellectual freedom and the need of 'a room of one's own'. They specifically came to London to find this freedom, reading in The reading room of The British Library. Wade also highlights the impact of the war(s) on these five very different characters. Mecklenburgh Square is now a hub for international students and barely recognisable, but there is hope: Researchers have established (...) exactly where Virginia Woolf's study at 37 Mecklenburgh Square would have sat within the modern building. Now, that room is given over each year to a woman student. She arrives in London, nervous or excited about what the city may offer her as she embarks on a new course of study. She crosses Mecklenburgh Square, climbs the stairs, turns the key in the doors of her new home, and finds a book sitting on the desk, ready for her to turn the first page: 'A room of one's own'.
November 14, 2022
This book discusses and makes connections between five women writers who lived in Mecklenburgh Square in the Bloomsbury neighborhood in London (not at the same time). The writers are all sort of iconoclastic and daring, in degrees defying convention and living in ways that helped develop their talents and worldviews. It makes me want to pick up Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayer's "best" novel.
April 27, 2024
This is such an accomplishment of archival research. I learned so much! Unlike other readers on here, I enjoyed the ways that the stories presented did resonate and occasionally overlap with each other. Wade does a great job of synthesizing painstaking research into engaging narrative.
May 15, 2021
An informative, brief exploration of five extraordinary women, Square Haunting is incredibly well researched with some captivating biographies (although I really struggled with the section on H.D.) but it is a little dry in places with the link to the Square more monotonous than thrilling.
An insightful and fascinating book!
An insightful and fascinating book!
Read
April 8, 2020Well. I've got a bunch of Netgalley ARCs I've left too long, but at least for this one it turns out that was because the perfect moment for it was waiting. It's the story of five women writers who lived in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square in the early 20th century, opening and closing with London under bombardment (though of course the Blitz is so mythologised one can easily forget the Great War bombing). We start with HD and "an abiding dread that 'the war will never be over'"; we end with Virginia Woolf, her move to the square "forcing her to confront a future which seemed increasingly futile". Sentences like "London, in the years immediately after the First World War, was a dismal place, the streets haunted by an air of gloom and decay", or Woolf's complaint that London in the next war had "become merely a congerie of houses lived in by people who work. There is no society, no luxury, no splendour, no gadding & flitting. All is serious & concentrated. It is as if the song had stopped" – when I started the book, this was history. Now it doubles as a perfect description of a few weeks back, my last time in the heart of town for who knows how long.
The book is not unduly strict about sticking to its subjects' time in Mecklenburgh Square; it's more a case of painting a picture of their lives with that time in the foreground. Certainly the conceit seems fair in a way group biographies can sometimes struggle to pull off. It's not perfect; there are a few sentences an editor should have saved, and who knows, maybe did in the final edition, of which the most glaring is the oxymoronic "volunteers began to be conscripted". Elsewhere it's more subtle errors of shading: "Strong Poison is the first Wimsey book in which Lord Peter's investment in the case overreaches the pure intellectual challenge: for the first time, dead ends leave him not titillated but helpless, terrified that he will fail", for instance. An assertion which seems questionable given his second outing, Clouds Of Witness, had already seen his brother on the hook if Wimsey didn't pull it off. Or "The publication of a memoir often signals that a life is drawing to an end, that the writer is assessing the past with the synthesising gaze of one whose work is done" – even leaving aside the celebrities who have three out by their thirtieth, this is an assertion with so many exceptions as to be scarcely worth making. But these are very much occasional annoyances in a mostly fluent and fascinating account.
Wade's first subject is HD, someone who was little more than a name to me – and in a sense not even that, just a pair of initials. Turns out her alias wasn't even her own idea but Ezra Pound's, and really, could there be a better opening illustration of these women's struggles to make their own way in the world? I can't say this left me tempted to read her work, her novels all rewriting her own tangled affairs with revealing variations of setting, incident and tone; they sound a little like Iris Murdoch minus the distance, and these days I find Murdoch herself a bit hard going. But as the protagonist of a brief life, she's excellent material, and if some of it is familiar territory (the double standards of free love in a patriarchal society which had yet to master decent contraception), both subject and biographer ensure it's still well worth reading.
Then it's the woman who made me most interested in reading this in the first place: Dorothy L Sayers. Who proves a natural successor to HD, having lived not just on the same square, but in exactly the same room, and more than that, got mixed up with the same man. By Wade's accounts, John Cournos was already a bit of a dick to start with, but it was partly his disastrous experiences with HD which soured him so much as to make him the mess he was for Sayers, the supposedly free-thinking but in fact self-regarding and controlling arsehole who would later inspire Phillip Boyes, the deeply deserving murder victim in the first Harriet Vane story, Strong Poison. Sayers, on the other hand, is a winning figure throughout, the writer struggling to make it ("I simply must hang on in London if I possibly can, it's the only place and I love it in spite of everything"), resisting the gravity of nice respectable jobs like teaching: "Cultivating an air of eccentricity betraying the fact that she didn't really want to be there, she would teach supine, lying on a bench, and once employed a sword with which to gesticulate at the blackboard". The heart of the chapter, understandably, is Sayers as seen through the lens of her masterpiece, Gaudy Night, the novel in which she investigated what the life of the mind might be like for independent women, and whether ultimately that could be harmonised with marriage. Alas, in her own life she may have materially succeeded so that she could have the luxuries she used to give Peter to distract from her own skintness, but never quite found the appropriate romantic match she gave Harriet. Interesting too that both of her leads should have been repurposed from quite separate aborted projects – it reinforces that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sense of literature as a community, characters slipping out of their pages to mingle behind our backs, and us very occasionally having the good fortune to catch them at it.
The links thereafter are never again quite so pronounced – yes, Cournos translates a book Jane Ellen Harrison reads, but that's hardly on the same level. At first I was a little frustrated by this choice, being much better acquainted with the work of Harrison's companion Hope Mirrlees. Companion in what sense? It could be anything from much younger lover, to somewhat possessive carer; Wade doesn't think the evidence is there either way, though I'm sure many will have headcanon answers. But she does give us wonderful glimpses of their home life which, like many of the best home lives, sat somewhere in the debatable lands between running joke and cultic devotion, here centred on a teddy: "Jane and Hope developed an elaborate private world surrounding 'the Bear', in which they were his Elder and Younger Wife, united in common fidelity to the venerable male". Unlike the first two women, starting their literary lives in the Square, Harrison moved there in her seventies, after a controversial career as a classicist at Cambridge, where she was generally frowned upon for being a woman with too many ideas and too little respect for terribly serious men. If there's a flaw here, it's that Wade never quite addresses in this chapter, only in the 'After the Square' epilogue (and then glancingly) the extent to which Harrison's theories of a matriarchal religion preceding the patriarchal ones have in their turn also come to be widely regarded as a superstructure with insufficient foundation in the evidence. Still, I loved the description of the plan around this time - debated, but quickly shelved lest it publicise the idea - to outlaw "lesbianism (associated with overeducation, prostitution, alcohol, nightclubs, divorce and vampires)".
I didn't find the chapter on economic historian Eileen Power as engaging as the others (though isn't that a perfect name for an economic historian?). Wade opens with the admission that much of Power's archive was destroyed, and as a result I never got the same sense of interiority here, of Power as a person. It becomes more a general study of interwar internationalism, the rise of academia with practical applications by way of the LSE, and that painfully doomed faith in the League of Nations. Much of which I already knew all too well from other accounts of that time, and almost all of which felt far too close to home from our own. One thing I did learn, though: the turnip was only introduced to Britain in 1645! I just pictured it as the sort of joyless thing luckless mediaeval peasants ate, but it postdates the potate! Why did anybody bother?
And then Virginia Woolf. The others, even Harrison for all her years, were making new starts when they came to Mecklenburgh; Woolf had reluctantly moved from around the corner, and was in any case only there less that half the time, spending the rest of it at her country cottage. Still, she belongs here, the whole book being in a sense an expansion on the theme of A Room Of One's Own. It's not happy reading, though: the great works were not the ones written here, where she was largely working on her biography of Roger Fry, reluctantly having to tell it straight and tame it down in exactly the way the Bloomsburies were supposed to have moved past. The description of her working on scraps of paper, often with the same sentence being repeated across them over and over, is horribly suggestive of The Shining. Still, there was once more that feeling of a book read at exactly the suitable moment when Wade tells us how during the Phoney War Woolf sometimes "experienced a disconcerting – almost 'treasonable' – feeling of private contentment amid the desolation elsewhere".
The conclusion, 'After the Square', wraps up the stories of the surviving protagonists, and restates the theme. It's a fitting capstone, though served largely to annoy me at Sayers finally giving in to the pretentious snootiness of Cournos and his ilk by acting like translating Dante's shitty self-insert Bible fanfic was a bigger deal than creating Wimsey and Vane. It's also well worth at least skimming the endnotes which, in among the standard attribution of references, also have some lovely longer digressions that didn't quite fit the main body of the book, including cameos for Nabokov, GDH Cole and Aleister Crowley.
The book is not unduly strict about sticking to its subjects' time in Mecklenburgh Square; it's more a case of painting a picture of their lives with that time in the foreground. Certainly the conceit seems fair in a way group biographies can sometimes struggle to pull off. It's not perfect; there are a few sentences an editor should have saved, and who knows, maybe did in the final edition, of which the most glaring is the oxymoronic "volunteers began to be conscripted". Elsewhere it's more subtle errors of shading: "Strong Poison is the first Wimsey book in which Lord Peter's investment in the case overreaches the pure intellectual challenge: for the first time, dead ends leave him not titillated but helpless, terrified that he will fail", for instance. An assertion which seems questionable given his second outing, Clouds Of Witness, had already seen his brother on the hook if Wimsey didn't pull it off. Or "The publication of a memoir often signals that a life is drawing to an end, that the writer is assessing the past with the synthesising gaze of one whose work is done" – even leaving aside the celebrities who have three out by their thirtieth, this is an assertion with so many exceptions as to be scarcely worth making. But these are very much occasional annoyances in a mostly fluent and fascinating account.
Wade's first subject is HD, someone who was little more than a name to me – and in a sense not even that, just a pair of initials. Turns out her alias wasn't even her own idea but Ezra Pound's, and really, could there be a better opening illustration of these women's struggles to make their own way in the world? I can't say this left me tempted to read her work, her novels all rewriting her own tangled affairs with revealing variations of setting, incident and tone; they sound a little like Iris Murdoch minus the distance, and these days I find Murdoch herself a bit hard going. But as the protagonist of a brief life, she's excellent material, and if some of it is familiar territory (the double standards of free love in a patriarchal society which had yet to master decent contraception), both subject and biographer ensure it's still well worth reading.
Then it's the woman who made me most interested in reading this in the first place: Dorothy L Sayers. Who proves a natural successor to HD, having lived not just on the same square, but in exactly the same room, and more than that, got mixed up with the same man. By Wade's accounts, John Cournos was already a bit of a dick to start with, but it was partly his disastrous experiences with HD which soured him so much as to make him the mess he was for Sayers, the supposedly free-thinking but in fact self-regarding and controlling arsehole who would later inspire Phillip Boyes, the deeply deserving murder victim in the first Harriet Vane story, Strong Poison. Sayers, on the other hand, is a winning figure throughout, the writer struggling to make it ("I simply must hang on in London if I possibly can, it's the only place and I love it in spite of everything"), resisting the gravity of nice respectable jobs like teaching: "Cultivating an air of eccentricity betraying the fact that she didn't really want to be there, she would teach supine, lying on a bench, and once employed a sword with which to gesticulate at the blackboard". The heart of the chapter, understandably, is Sayers as seen through the lens of her masterpiece, Gaudy Night, the novel in which she investigated what the life of the mind might be like for independent women, and whether ultimately that could be harmonised with marriage. Alas, in her own life she may have materially succeeded so that she could have the luxuries she used to give Peter to distract from her own skintness, but never quite found the appropriate romantic match she gave Harriet. Interesting too that both of her leads should have been repurposed from quite separate aborted projects – it reinforces that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sense of literature as a community, characters slipping out of their pages to mingle behind our backs, and us very occasionally having the good fortune to catch them at it.
The links thereafter are never again quite so pronounced – yes, Cournos translates a book Jane Ellen Harrison reads, but that's hardly on the same level. At first I was a little frustrated by this choice, being much better acquainted with the work of Harrison's companion Hope Mirrlees. Companion in what sense? It could be anything from much younger lover, to somewhat possessive carer; Wade doesn't think the evidence is there either way, though I'm sure many will have headcanon answers. But she does give us wonderful glimpses of their home life which, like many of the best home lives, sat somewhere in the debatable lands between running joke and cultic devotion, here centred on a teddy: "Jane and Hope developed an elaborate private world surrounding 'the Bear', in which they were his Elder and Younger Wife, united in common fidelity to the venerable male". Unlike the first two women, starting their literary lives in the Square, Harrison moved there in her seventies, after a controversial career as a classicist at Cambridge, where she was generally frowned upon for being a woman with too many ideas and too little respect for terribly serious men. If there's a flaw here, it's that Wade never quite addresses in this chapter, only in the 'After the Square' epilogue (and then glancingly) the extent to which Harrison's theories of a matriarchal religion preceding the patriarchal ones have in their turn also come to be widely regarded as a superstructure with insufficient foundation in the evidence. Still, I loved the description of the plan around this time - debated, but quickly shelved lest it publicise the idea - to outlaw "lesbianism (associated with overeducation, prostitution, alcohol, nightclubs, divorce and vampires)".
I didn't find the chapter on economic historian Eileen Power as engaging as the others (though isn't that a perfect name for an economic historian?). Wade opens with the admission that much of Power's archive was destroyed, and as a result I never got the same sense of interiority here, of Power as a person. It becomes more a general study of interwar internationalism, the rise of academia with practical applications by way of the LSE, and that painfully doomed faith in the League of Nations. Much of which I already knew all too well from other accounts of that time, and almost all of which felt far too close to home from our own. One thing I did learn, though: the turnip was only introduced to Britain in 1645! I just pictured it as the sort of joyless thing luckless mediaeval peasants ate, but it postdates the potate! Why did anybody bother?
And then Virginia Woolf. The others, even Harrison for all her years, were making new starts when they came to Mecklenburgh; Woolf had reluctantly moved from around the corner, and was in any case only there less that half the time, spending the rest of it at her country cottage. Still, she belongs here, the whole book being in a sense an expansion on the theme of A Room Of One's Own. It's not happy reading, though: the great works were not the ones written here, where she was largely working on her biography of Roger Fry, reluctantly having to tell it straight and tame it down in exactly the way the Bloomsburies were supposed to have moved past. The description of her working on scraps of paper, often with the same sentence being repeated across them over and over, is horribly suggestive of The Shining. Still, there was once more that feeling of a book read at exactly the suitable moment when Wade tells us how during the Phoney War Woolf sometimes "experienced a disconcerting – almost 'treasonable' – feeling of private contentment amid the desolation elsewhere".
The conclusion, 'After the Square', wraps up the stories of the surviving protagonists, and restates the theme. It's a fitting capstone, though served largely to annoy me at Sayers finally giving in to the pretentious snootiness of Cournos and his ilk by acting like translating Dante's shitty self-insert Bible fanfic was a bigger deal than creating Wimsey and Vane. It's also well worth at least skimming the endnotes which, in among the standard attribution of references, also have some lovely longer digressions that didn't quite fit the main body of the book, including cameos for Nabokov, GDH Cole and Aleister Crowley.
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