#square haunting

[thesarahshay]

You've heard of "falling in love with a fictionalized version of a young H.G. Wells in Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party," now get ready for "falling in love with the reality of elderly H.G. Wells by reading Francesca Wade's Square Haunting."

[universitybookstore]

New from Tim Duggan Books, Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars, by Francesca Wade.

[thesarahshay]

I can't remember which of you recommended Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, but I'm reading it now and just looked up some photos of HD...and she looks so much like my internal idea of Harriet Vane. Combined with the fact that I did this right after the part of the book that mentions that John Cournos was in love with her, it made for a very surreal moment!

Nobody spoil whether/how well she and Sayers knew each other, because now I'm curious if she's the reason that Harriet's middle name is Deborah.

[kitcatbookmad]

Do you believe in fate? Just a little bit? This book came to me a few months ago through my library, the audiobook was available at a time I had nothing to read. It sounded amazing, and it was. It is about 5 women; Dorothy L Sayers, Hilda Doolittle (known as HD), Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power, and Virginia Woolf, all of whom lived on Mecklenburgh Square in between the wars. All of them were impressive in their own right, authors, poets, historians, classicists and academics, but having them all reside in the same square, in one instance the very same room (not at the same time…) seemed impressive. Fate?

I talk some friends’ ears off about it and lay it to rest. Then, months later, I have three conversations about it in one day, resulting in my grandma giving me a Dorothy Sayers book, my mum pointing out that I used to hate classics (thanks… no longer the case) and my book club debating why all classics get lumped into the same genre. The next day I find this copy in a charity shop for £2. I proceed to see it twice more in other book shops in London AND walk through the area where the square is in Bloomsbury. I took a small detour to actually stand on the street, on the corner where these 5 women walked and lived and wrote. The buildings most of them lived in were bombed in the Second World War, while Virginia (and Leonard) lived there, so this is a new building and sign. But the trees were likely there in the square garden all those years ago, listening to the hope and longing of the women working away in the buildings around them.

If you get a chance to read this book, please do. Something brought it to me, something brought those women to the same place, something led Francesca Wade there too.

[sandovers]

what i wouldn’t give!

[woolfwriter]

Five radical women writers, including Virginia Woolf, and a Bloomsbury square

Story of five radical women writers, including Virginia Woolf, and a Bloomsbury square

Five radical women writers living in a square in a London neighborhood. The square is Mecklenburgh. The neighborhood is Bloomsbury. And one of the women writers is Virginia Woolf.

The book that tells the story of the five independent women writers who lived in Mecklenburgh Square at various times between the two world wars is Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London…

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