A SUNDAY TIMES LITERARY NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (AS CHOSEN BY AUTHORS)
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLE GIFFORD PRIZE**
'Outstanding. I'll be recommending this all year.' Sarah Bakewell
'A beautiful and deeply moving book.' Sally Rooney
'I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting.' Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925
Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of interwar Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and writer and publisher Virginia Woolf. They each alighted there seeking a space where they could live, love and, above all, work independently.
Francesca Wade's spellbinding group biography explores how these trailblazing women pushed the boundaries of literature, scholarship, and social norms, forging careers that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own.
'Elegant, erudite and absorbing, Square Haunting is a startlingly original debut, and Francesca Wade is a writer to watch.' Frances Wilson
'A fascinating voyage through the lives of five remarkable women - moving and immersive.' Edmund Gordon
Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury was passed through in the interwar years by H. D., Dorothy L. Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf during a period of expanding female possibility, with these creative pioneers operating in this liberated new territory. Wade's group biography reveals the place of Mecklenburgh Square in each writer's development.
