Virginia Woolf’s Writing Room

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” VIRGINIA WOOLF

Adapted from theguardian.com: Novelist/essayist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and husband Leonard bought their house in Sussex, U.K.,  in 1919. Two years later, Woolf had a small writing room in the garden constructed out of a wooden toolshed below a loft. She wrote there in the summers, and liked it very much, though it was not ideal for concentration. She was always being distracted — by Leonard sorting the apples over her head in the loft, or the church bells at the bottom of the garden, or the noise of the children in the school next door, or the dog sitting next to her and scratching itself and leaving paw marks on her manuscript pages. In winter, it was often so cold and damp that she couldn’t hold her pen and had to retreat indoors. She wrote there with a board on her lap. In this writer’s lodge, Woolf wrote parts of all her major novels from Mrs Dalloway to Between the Acts, many essays and reviews, and many letters.