A thoughtful and innovative collective biography, Square Haunting points to the way place can illuminate literary history. Engaging and beautifully written.

this was a great biography, it was interesting to read that these five women all were at the same address. It really was a well done book and well researched.

I ran a positive review of this book in our 11 newspapers and websites. I ran a positive review of this book in our 11 newspapers and websites. I ran a positive review of this book in our 11 newspapers and websites.

This is a nonfiction book about five women writers who lived in the Square in England and how it may have influenced their lives and their writing. I found this to be extremely well written and well researched. I would recommend it for fans of history and those interested in the lives of women writers between the World Wars, among them Virginia Wolfe.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

An interesting exploration, but we're prioritizing titles that center BIPOC writers and history. I'm glad this book exists, and it's worth a read if you're interested in the topic.

I've been reading a ton of "between the wars" fiction lately, and this was a nice non fiction dip into the realities of life for women at this time. I came away with a greater appreciation for what life was like for early 20th century women writers.

Mecklenburgh Square, on the outskirts of Bloomsbury, was home to five remarkable writers between the world wars. (All the moreso because of their gender.) Francesca Wade's meticulous research and writing explains how their time residing there shaped each of them. We learn how this radical address influenced the poet H.D, detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, in addition to Virginia Woolf. Each woman arrived there eager for the life they longed to lead in a time when society was often strongly opposed to their success. While much has been written about Woolf and her portrayal feels the least novel, her time there contributed to the course of her life.

In Square Haunting, Wade has written a phenomenal work that provides remarkable insight into how Mecklenburgh Square shaped each woman's self-image, self-sufficiency and their writings in an often chaotic male dominated society.

Thank you to Netgalley, Crown Publishing, Tim Duggan Books, Faber, and Francesca Wade for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5
Page Count: 434
Genre: Nonfiction, Biography/Memoir

Upon a glance at the cover, I’m drawn into this book. Upon reading the first words written by Francesca Wade, I am sold. Wade’s writing provides an excellent overview of 5 extraordinary women during the interwar period (between World War I and II). Essentially, the book provides 5 miniature biographies of these women: Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.), Dorothy L Sayers, Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power, and arguably the most famous name, Virginia Woolf.

The prologue opens in 1940, as World War II and the Blitz rage in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London. The home held a 200-year history of activists, lawyers, doctors, artists, and writers. The location was home to the 5 biographical sources in this book, and the prologue concludes with Virginia Woolf rescuing her 24 volumes of diaries, and never living in London again.

Wade then provides a detailed history of Mecklenburgh Square. The people who lived there beforehand and the important moments crafted in its walls. Side note, as someone who has lived minutes from the area during my graduate programs, I found myself instantly pulled into memories thanks to Wade’s writing. Her ways of describing the area are almost magical. What is now a neighborhood in the middle of Zone 1 London where properties sell for millions was once an area for the working class, where artists, poor families, and the radical working woman slept. “At last, here was a district of the city where a room of one’s own could be procured,” Wade says, echoing Woolf. Her book title originates from a 1925 diary entry, in which Woolf extols the pleasures of “street sauntering and square haunting”. Learning of the lives who lived in Bloomsbury and MS is a reminder of how influential every corner of London can be.

The following 5 chapters are the lives of the above women illuminated by their shared location.


Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.) - 1886-1961. Lived in MS from 1916-18
Living in #44, H.D.,wrote an autobiographical novel cycle about her troubled marriage. Doolittle, an American, is associated with the 20th-century imagist poet group which included Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She also published Sea Garden (1916) and The God (1917) while living in MS.

Dorothy L Sayers - 1893-1957. Lived in MS from 1920-21
Sayers moved into the rooms of #44 in MS about 2 years after H.D. vacated. The first of Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries was written amongst the musty walls. It would be published in 1923 and be the first of 11 featuring the character, but none after the outbreak of WW2.

Jane Ellen Harrison - 1850-1928. Lived in MS From 1926-28
Harrison was a classicist and linguist, being one of the founders of modern studies revolving around Ancient Greek religion and mythology. Ideologically, she is considered a moderate suffragist. Following World War I, Harrison never visited Italy or Greece again. Her last work, Reminiscences of a Student’s Life, was published in 1925. Her time in #11 MS began as her health began to fail and would conclude with her death. Harrison shared her rooms on MS with her long time friend and collaborator - Hope Mirrlees, and Mirrlees moved to South Africa after WW2.

Eileen Power - 1889-1940. Lived in MS from 1922-40
Power is an economic historian and medievalist. She spent the most time in MS (#20) of any of the other subjects of Wade’s study. She would leave the rooms with her death of heart failure in 1940. Power was exceptionally important in her fields and although she might not be as well known as Woolf, she is an important name in the study of social history related to the everyday person over the importance related to dates or battles, something I happen to study for a living.

Virginia Woolf - 1882-1941. Lived in MS from 1939-40
11 years after Harrison’s death, Virginia Woolf moved into Mecklenburgh Square during the outbreak of WWII. From #37, she multitasked between making blackout curtains and working on her final novel, Between the Acts. From the basement, her husband, Leonard Woolf, ran the Hogarth Press. Five months after Woolf left London for good, she committed suicide.

Wade’s book focuses on the idea that none of these incredibly influential women lived in MS at the same time nor did they know each other on a personal level. Although Woolf and Power’s time does overlap, the fact of them being strangers is striking. MS is seen as a halfway house, while these women decide their next move in the world. Except for Power, that is, who lived in MS for 18 years until her death. Her epilogue of sorts focuses on that next chapter and where the women and their lives after living on MS. Woolf’s suicide, Power’s attempted sabbatical and its cancellation in 1940 due to the war (she would die soon after), Harrison’s death and the effect it had on her former flatmate, Sayers time on the Author’s Planning Committee of Ministry of Information and the later publications and stop of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and H.D.’s time in Switzerland (where she would die in 1961) and traveling through Europe during and after the war.

The final two sections of the final chapter focusing on the epilogue of Mecklenburgh Square, where I walk through daily on my trips to the coffee shop, to the post office, and for my grocery shop. After this fantastic read, I know I will be interested in whatever Wade produces next. I also know I will be looking around differently as I cross the walks of Mecklenburgh. I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend visiting Mecklenburgh Square if you have the chance. Just take the tube to Kings Cross St. Pancras - and you are golden!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
One of the few authors that stuck with me post-English degree is Virginia Woolf, although more for her essays than for her overly stylized novels. So, when I saw that this book included Virginia Woolf, focusing on the square in London where she and four other early twentieth century women writers lived and their lives there, I was intrigued. I loved the insights both into their creative processes (and how this location may have played a role inspiring them) and their inner lives. This is a wonderful celebration of women working to accomplish their passion for writing, connected both by their shared profession and the limitations put on their gender that they burst through in different ways, as well as proximity.

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade is a history of Mecklenburgh Square through women writers who lived there in the early twentieth century. 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. 

Five women writers at different times in the early years of the twentieth century lived at Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury. Perhaps the most famous of the residents was Virginia Woolf. Although I have read Woolf's letters and diaries from the period, it was interesting to see that information in the context of the time and place. Other writers include H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), the poet, and colleague of Ezra Pound. Mecklenburgh resident Dorothy L. Sayers was a famous and still popular for her detective novelist. Eileen Power was a writer of a different sort. She was appointed to the Chair of Economic History at the London School of Economics and was a medieval historian. Lastly, Jane Harrison was one of the founders of the modern study of Greek mythology.

All five women were accomplished in their fields, and received some notoriety in their time; Most have gained celebrity as the century progressed. They were not only trailblazers in their fields but also radicals in their personal lives. Creativity and the androgynous mind is a theme in the series along with lifestyles outside the norm. Although not flamboyant, these women broke out of the mold for their time, whether in relationships, women's rights, nontraditional roles, literary style, or even thoughts on war. Square Haunting is the discovery of women who fought to change education and the role of women in England. Woolf sums up women's feelings during the early twentieth century. "...since women have historically had little, if any, stake in their country -- deprived of education, employment, and political influence -- the forced of patriotism which spur men to fight mean little to women." Women here saw the struggle as a world problem, not a national one. The idea of nationalism, especially in that era, was a cause of war and restrictions of which Woolf would say, "As a woman my country is the whole world."

Wade presents a well-documented history and partial biography of the five women. Using their lives at Mecklenburgh Square as a limiting factor, she manages to create snapshots of a time and place in British history and the role of women who challenged the status quo.

“Though they arrived at Mecklenburgh Square at different stages in life, moving there provided each of them a fresh start at a critical moment: the way they each chose to set up home in the square was a bold declaration of who they were, and of the life they wanted to lead.”

Square Haunting focuses on the influence living at Mecklenburgh Square in London’s Bloomsbury had on the poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. Each lived here at different times, choosing not the expected path for women, marriage and children, but feeding their ambitions, a break for freedom from the social norms of their time. Here they could ‘follow their own pursuits’, and meet with like minds. They had to work to earn the lives they wanted, of course some had the wealth of family but money was a necessity one always had to fret over. Geography matters, it is always conducive to one’s education to be at the heart of things, politics, revolutions, and around people and places that ‘stimulate the intellect.’

We remember these women as established writers but it is the making of them that is often forgotten. Their fears and of course the fight to be more that their mothers before them were ‘allowed’. To reach for the things their fathers and brothers were given simply for being born male, all those opportunities women were shamed for wanting. In the midst of wars, modern culture on the rise, bohemian life, Bloomsbury was often thought of as a ‘vulgar place’. Here was a changing society, moving fast, too fast for some. But for women, it truly ‘offered a room of one’s own.” Our great authors wanted a different life, Mecklenburgh Square is where they would be shaped, a common thread in their world. Or it is where they were meant to find refuge, and engage with others to escape their own mind.

H.D.’s time spent in Mecklenburgh Square tinted her whole life, writing of how men hindered her (a female) as an artist. Disinterested in being Pounds protégé writing autobiographical work, exposing real people with her pen, layered truths and fiction. Born an outsider, understanding all too well how unrealized dreams could hinder a woman, as with her own mother, she would never confine herself so. Playing with her gender, shirking rules, rebellious and vulnerable, London was just the place Hilda would belong. Enthralled with suffragettes, finding a perfect circle of friends, London itself was a place in her writing that her characters, heroines too could find confidence in ‘work and herself’. H.D’s hungry mind could feed on manuscripts at the British museum, marriage with Aldington was a joining of like minds, but the Bloomsbury sets pleasures were interrupted by war, patriotism. No one could remain untouched. Devastation would come soon enough, personally as well. A place is both freedom and later, “four walls about to crush her”, when her marriage began to crumble with infidelity, and deep loss. Mecklenburgh was formative, even when she was wrapped in misery, for it is here she found herself.

One common theme is women deciding to be neither male nor female. For “it is fatal to be man or woman pure and simple”, particularly for a writer. For these famous women it reduced them to be one or the other, to be defined, to carry the weight of expectations, of one’s sex, better to be both- to have an ‘androgynous mind’ is the only way to a limitless existence.

Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to torture her long suffering parents with her big dreams, ‘yearning to achieve success through her writing’, she didn’t want to be a teacher. Not surprising from a woman who was one of the first females educated at Oxford. She felt “her brain growing rusty” when she settled upon teaching, so she followed her heart and a man to France and with the sour end of that venture, knew it was London that shined with possibilities. She felt at home immediately at Mecklenburgh Square, where for H.D. it was collapse of her marriage, it was independence for the single Dorothy. Living life differently in London left her with a brave feeling. working on translations for extra money so she could continue to write her poetry and chilling stories. Here she wrote her first novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and everything in her surroundings supplied her with plenty of material for the future of her work. This was the only place that could guarantee her artistic success. In time, love would test her too, and her feelings about her work and social norms. Sayers, just like H.D., would discover the cost of freedom for a woman is much harsher than for any man. Work is where a woman like Sayers healed, and she pored herself into it.

Jane Ellen Harrison is this books enigma, a woman who came to Mecklenburgh Square at the advanced age of 75, “having renounced her comfortable life as a Cambridge don”. She destroyed evidence of the life she led before and as Francesca Wade notes, for Harrison it was a rebirth, not a beginning as it was for H.D. and Sayers before her. It would also be her final home, as she died there. A bit of a myth maker about her own life, what mattered most wasn’t intimate revelations and exposure about herself but that it’s possible to shake off and discard anything that doesn’t provide what is needed, for one’s work or happiness. Many lives, regardless of age, are always possible. Once called one of the cleverest women in England, she too chose of life of intellectual stimulation and struggled with the in between time of success and uncertainty about her future. She was passed over often, as women often are, for posts that she certainly deserved even if she didn’t like such a fact to be known, never one for being pitied. From Archaeological digs and her study on man-made hierarchies and ” the gradual erosion of women’s importance in Greek society” she drove home with factual evidence the vital roles women played in history, challenging the institutions run by men. What a greater inspiration to other young ladies, and female writers coming of age, then the findings of Jane Ellen Harrison and learned ladies like her? Of course, she was accused of debauching young minds. A woman’s education could go further, and should, then motherhood alone. A staunch believer in being a ‘free woman’, but much like the others also was adamant about not categorizing brains into male/female. Eventually into her life came Hope Mirrlees, a relationship that gave her so much of what she needed.

Eileen Power is another whose history has been partially erased ‘for reasons unknown’ by her own sisters after her death. A serious scholar, but as a woman seen by her male peers as ‘an anomaly’ for women surely aren’t this clever. Subordination seems to be a role women like Power and Harrison fought against and yet understood all too well. Her years in Mecklenburgh Square showed other women there was much open to them, a feminist, a pacifistic, who ‘owned her independence.’ She wanted her work to prosper and her surroundings, home should allow for it. She wasn’t one to let her personal life interfere with her important professional work, but it was vital for her to find like minded female friends with whom she could be herself. Her biggest cause, she said, was the cause of women. That women keep their individuality after marriage, ‘that love is not the only thing in the world’.

For all the important women in this book, their thoughts echo many of the same things. That they are a person, that love isn’t the only thing in life, that an education, intellectual stimulation, a profession, passion is vital for every human being. Mecklenburgh Square was a hive of activity that fed them with the very things they needed to grow and to freely be themselves. Despite their intelligence, each saw the same “unchallenged assumptions” again and again. Maybe this is why they were found walking straight into what had always been predominately male territory. In London, they were able to cultivate friendships, connections to make the life they wanted a reality, despite the expectations of their time.

Virginia Woolf is the last, her time in Mecklenburgh Square was tense, with ‘political crisis’. There wasn’t fresh hope to be had, for Woolf a cloud of grief followed she and her husband Leonard after a wretched year. They were to manage their time going through a war. Back and forth, solitude and city- for her ‘peace of mind’ during a deep depression. When in Mecklenburgh Square they could entertain and debate with fellow writers. The lively discussions lifted the mood but her storms always returned. Not unlike the women before her, her love life was complicated and non-conventional in it’s own right. Partaking in an affair of her own with Vita Sackville-West, their marriage had it’s problems. Leonard was the one that tried to nourish her so she could write, despite her fragile mind. Like the others, she too was invested in defying conventions, in exploring how such things effect people, their life choices, their happiness, work and love life. It seemed she too was influenced by the environment of Mecklenburgh Square, tacking questions of womanhood, personhood. Yet with the destruction and looming threat, she couldn’t be truly at ease there. She still hadn’t truly found a room of one’s own.

This book is about women shaping their own worlds, trying to be self-sufficient in incredibly difficult, often chaotic, war-torn times, breaking with social norms. Wanting nothing more than to be a person, not confined by gender or any other roles society seems fit for them. They struggle with work and relationships, with family and destiny, and some with the state of their own mind. Sometimes the women are contrary, but always curious, intelligent and inspiring. It is an engaging read, sometimes heavy and sad, but it couldn’t be any other way when you strike out to change the world, or discover your place in it.

This is how one place shaped the lives of these famous women. Yes, read it, my review is flimsy by comparison to Wade’s work.

Publication Date: April 7, 2020

Crown Publishing

Tim Duggan Books

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.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

This book tells the stories of five prominent women who lived on Mecklenburgh Square in London in the 1900s.  The subjects did not necessarily know one another but they shared an address during years when women were beginning to assert their independence in relationships and work.

The five women are the writer/poet HD; Dorothy Sayers who is well-known for the Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane mysteries;  Jane Harrison a prominent classical scholar; Eileen Power a scholar in the field of economics and, finally, Virginia Woolf, an author beloved by many.  Each has a chapter in the book in their own right with connections being acknowledged when they are there.  As one example, both HD and Dorothy Sayers were involved with the writer John Cournos.

The book begins with a fabulous introduction that provides the historic context for what follows.  This, in itself, could be read as an excellent essay.  The author then tells the story of each of these women.  Every one of them had a complex life in which they tried to accomplish what they felt was important.  There are so many vignettes.  Below is one.

Dorothy Sayers gave to her characters what she wanted herself.  The author says that when money was hard to come by, Sayers lavished a lifestyle she did not have on Wimsey.  He had the cars, the homes, the food, the servants that Dorothy did not.  Sayers also gave Harriet Vane the relationship that she, Dorothy, may have wanted; it was one among equals.  To share a fact that I had not known, Dorothy became pregnant and had a child whom she could not raise due to the mores of the time.

This title is written in a very readable and fluid style.  The pages turn easily and I was always looking forward to the next time that I would have the chance to read more.

If you are interested in the lives of women, the compromises that one may or may not make in life and this little neighborhood in London, pick up the book.  I recommend it most highly.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title in exchange for an honest review.


#SquareHaunting #NetGalley

Thank you to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the chance to read and review this book. I liked this book-very well researched with lots of interesting facts about these five women. It is like five stories in one. Highly recommend if you like biographies.

This unusual book feels a bit like psychogeographical biography. The author takes a specific location--Mecklenburgh Square in London--as the structural conceit to write what amounts to five mini-biographies about famous (or once-famous/now-lost) women writers, artists, activists, and revolutionaries in the first part of the 20th century. If you enjoy deeply researched biography, this is a bit like "Five for the price of one." I'd only heard of Virginia Woolf and Dorothy L. Sayers before reading this book so it was a pleasure to learn about the lives and work of the other three women (H.D., Eileen Power, and Jane Harrison).