Square Haunting

Five Writers in London Between the Wars

By: Francesca Wade

Narrated by: Corrie James

Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.

Square Haunting is a glorious portrait of five of the square's inhabitants whose lives intersected in the interwar years: modernist poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle; crime writer Dorothy Sayers; celebrated classicist Jane Harrison; historian and suffragist Eileen Power; and Virginia Woolf. Francesca Wade's luminous group biography restores a female voice to London's streets, revealing five unforgettable characters who forged careers and identities that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own.

Roving across a time of historical upheaval, Wade takes us beyond the famed bohemian parties and political salons into the emotional texture and gender politics of daily life itself - and an era that gave birth to a new modes of working, loving, and being.

©2020 Francesca Wade (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Slow... Full of info... inspiring

Overall the stories were interesting (I admit to a skipping Virginia Woolf... after Orlando... I figured I knew enough about her.... Also at the same time the of stories of the other lady gave me additional information I needed) I knew so little about these women and they inspired me... I've actually started considering writing the essay I have been putting off for years... the book enspired.... I've even come up with a thesis... so I can't complain too much
but I did find it really painfully slow and dry but overall it inspired me and isn't that what a book is meant to do