Francesca Wade

“I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting,” Virginia Woolf, 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.

“In following the lives of these five extraordinary women, Francesca Wade pursues questions about love, community, friendship and intellectual work in times of crisis. A beautiful and deeply moving book, ” Sally Rooney