Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1925

It is now after dinner, our first summertime night, and the mood for writing has left me, only just brushed me and left me. I have not achieved my sacred half hour…

One thing, in considering my state of mind now, seems to me beyond dispute; that I have, at last, bored down into my oil well, and can’t scribble fast enough to…

The Common Reader was out on Thursday: this is Monday and so far I have not heard a word about it, private or public; it is as if one tossed a stone into a pond and…

This is a note for future reference, as they say. The Common Reader came out 8 days ago and so far not a single review has appeared, and nobody has written to me or…

This is the temperature chart of a book. We went to Cambridge, and Goldie said he thought me the finest living critic: said, in his jerky angular way: “Who wrote…

As for The Common Reader, the Lit. Sup. had close on two columns sober and sensible praise—neither one thing nor the other—my fate in The Times. And Goldie writes…

I meant to register more of my books’ temperatures. C.R. does not sell; but is praised. I was really pleased to open the Manchester Guardian this morning and read…

Bank holiday, and we are in London. To record my books’ fates slightly bores me; but now both are floated, and Mrs. D. doing surprisingly well. 1070 already sold. I…

A disgraceful confession—this is Sunday morning and just after ten, and here I am sitting down to write diary and not fiction or reviews, without any excuse, except…

No, Lytton does not like Mrs. Dalloway, and, what is odd, I like him all the better for saying so, and don’t much mind. What he says is that there is a discordancy…

A bitter cold day, succeeding a chilly windy night, in which were lit all the Chinese lanterns of Roger’s garden party. And I do not love my kind. I detest them. I…

Here the door opened and Morgan came in to ask us out to lunch with him at the Etoile, which we did, though we had a nice veal and ham pie at home (this is in the…

I am intolerably sleepy and annulled and so write here. I do want indeed to consider my next book, but I am inclined to wait for a clearer head. The thing is I…

And why couldn’t I see or feel that all this time I was getting a little used up and riding on a flat tyre? So I was, as it happened; and fell down in a faint at…

How my handwriting goes down hill! Another sacrifice to the Hogarth Press. Yet what I owe the Hogarth Press is barely paid by the whole of my handwriting. Haven’t I…