To be honest, it took me a while to get into this -- the introduction is far longer than it needs to be, and feels more like an apology or a synopsis entry to a dissertation.

Once the biographies started, I was drawn in more and more. I was particularly fascinated to learn about Hilda Doolittle/HD, Ilene Power and Jane Harrison, as I had never heard of any of them before. I loved learning more about Dorothy Sayers (even though I could wish she loved Wimsey more), and I think the Virginia Woolf section was wonderfully focused on her work -- I like how much it talked about what she was doing and how she was dealing with her mental health, rather than writing her struggles off. On the whole, I thought the premise was a little wacky -- connecting via a space, but the interconnections really are astonishing, and I found the strength of the subjects inspiring.


Audio Advanced Reader's Copy Provided by Libro.fm. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2021/07/2021081-square-haunting-five-women.html ( )

The 20th century ushered in a period of change for women, leading to advances in education and greater independence. London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood flourished as a residential and intellectual hub and one specific enclave, Mecklenburgh Square, was home to five notable women writers and scholars over more than twenty years. The poet Hilda Doolittle, known as H.D., came first in 1916, followed by author Dorothy Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, historian Eileen Power, and author Virginia Woolf.

In Square Haunting, Francesca Wade profiles each woman and shows how their time in Mecklenburgh Square informed their lives and their work. None of the women lived there at the same time and their circles barely overlapped, but there are common threads running through their lives: scholarship, independence, and the courage to flout convention. And yet their success often came at significant emotional cost.

Before reading this book, Woolf was the figure I was most familiar with. I enjoyed reading about others who forged similar paths, and am grateful for their pioneering role in improving the lives of future generations of women. ( )

[Square Haunting] is a group biography of five writers/academics connected by place, Mecklenburgh Square in London. They didn't all live there at the same time, but were all drawn to the location as a place where, as women, they could be in the middle of life and culture, but also have small place to call their own and focus on their work. The author devotes a section to each woman in the order that she lived in Mecklenburgh Square: the poet and author H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) who lived there from 1916-1918; the novelist Dorothy Sayers who lived there in 1920; academic of ancient history Jane Ellen Harrison who lived there from 1926-1928; economic historian Eileen Power who lived there from 1922-1940; and author Virginia Woolf who was there 1939-1940.

I loved reading about these women, who, across the board, struggled to balance the desire to be taken seriously in their fields with the hope of having a balanced and fulfilled life. There are many parallels to be drawn about the challenges they faced to have their work judged on equal footing with men. Overall, I thought this book was pretty successful, especially considering the challenging topic. Though these women had similarities, they weren't a circle and largely did not interact. Drawing them together through the location of Mecklenburgh Square worked very well for some of the women, but for others I thought the tie to place was less strong. Despite these few reservations, I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in the time period. I hadn't even heard of two of these women, and knew very little about H.D. and Dorothy Sayers. Viriginia Woolf I'm pretty familiar with, but the section about her brought some welcome new ideas about her life.

[[Francesca Wade]], the author, seems fairly young from her bio, and I will read whatever she writes next. ( )

This is an inventive approach to biography. All of the 5 women in this book lived in the same Square in Bloomsbury between the First world war and the second. They lived their for different times, some less than a year, others for much longer. They didn't always overlap in terms of residency and they didn't necessarily socialise together if they did. But the links that tie them together are many and varied. Some lived there at the start of their writing career, others nearer the end. They each tried to present, in their own way, a different type of life for women, one where independence and a marriage of two minds was possible and desirable. Of the 5 women, I have heard of only 2, which is poor on my part. But I do know the area. I worked, for a time, at Brunswick Square, which is the matching square on the other side of the Foundling Hospital from Mecklenburg Square. I liked the idea that these 5 women shared something that was more than just geography, and she makes this case throughout the book. The biographies start quite separate, but gradually then overlap, as the links between the various women through their extended social circle and through their writings becomes clearer. The final chapter on the post war history of the square was interesting as well.
As a means of writing about 5 different women, the use of the location was certainly interesting. I quite enjoyed this and mean to read some of the other women that I am less familiar with. ( )