Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1924

London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, and get carried into beauty without raising a finger. The nights are amazing, with…

Here we are at Rodmell, and I with 20 minutes to fill in before dinner. A feeling of depression is on me, as if we were old and near the end of all things. It must…

But it’s a question of work. I am already a good deal pulled together by sticking at my books: my 250 words at fiction first, and then a systematic beginning, I…

Into all these calculations, broke the death of Conrad, followed by a wire from the Lit. Sup. earnestly asking me kindly to do a leader on him, which flattered and…

It is a disgrace that I write nothing, or if I write, write sloppily, using nothing but present participles. I find them very useful in my last lap of Mrs. D. There…

It is disgraceful. I did run upstairs thinking I’d make time to enter that astounding fact—the last words of the last page of Mrs. Dalloway, but was interrupted.…

I am now galloping over Mrs. Dalloway, re-typing it entirely from the start, which is more or less what I did with the V.O.: a good method, I believe, as thus one…