Ebook: Square haunting: five women, freedom and London between the wars

'I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting.'Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925

In London during the interwar years, five women's lives intertwined around one address. Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes ofBloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poetH. D., detective novelistDorothy L. Sayers, classicistJane Harrison, economic historianEileen Power, and author and publisherVirginia Woolf. In an era when women's freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they couldlive, love and - above all - work independently.

From the square, thesetrailblazing women pushed the boundaries of scholarship, literary form and social norms. Taking us into the emotional texture of their lives,Francesca Wade's luminous group biography reveals five unforgettable characterswho forged careers that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own.

'Elegant, erudite and absorbing,Square Hauntingis a startlingly original debut, and Francesca Wade is a writer to watch.' Frances Wilson

'A fascinating voyage through the lives of five remarkable women - a moving and immersive portrait.' Edmund Gordon