12 October 1931 – 18 October 1931

More notes on The Waves. The sales, these past three days, have fallen to 50 or so: after the great flare up when we sold 500 in one day, the brushwood has died down, as I foretold. (Not that I thought we should sell more than 3,000.) What has happened is that the library readers can’t get through it and are sending their copies back. So, I prophesy, it will now dribble along till we have sold 6,000 and then almost die, yet not quite. For it has been received, as I may say, quoting the stock phrases without vanity, with applause. All the provinces read enthusiastically. I am rather, in a sense, as the M.’s would say, touched. The unknown provincial reviewers say with almost one accord, here is Mrs. Woolf doing her best work; it can’t be popular; but we respect her for so doing; and find The Waves positively exciting. I am in danger, indeed, of becoming our leading novelist, and not with the highbrows only.