Group biographies are having something of a moment, and Virginia Woolf seems to feature in many of them. In her first book, Francesca Wade has taken the unusual step of not examining Woolf in the context of family, lovers or other members of the Bloomsbury Group, but positioning her alongside other radical women thinkers who lived in Bloomsbury’s Mecklenburgh Square between the wars.
This area of London has been historically praised for its serenity, not least by Isabella in Jane Austen’s Emma, who comments: “Our part of London is very superior to most others! You must not confound us with London in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy!”
