Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1928

Yesterday we went to Hardy’s funeral. What did I think of? Of Max Beerbohm’s letter, just read; or a lecture to the Newn-hamites about women’s writing. At intervals…

I am so cold I can hardly hold the pen. The futility of it all—so I broke off; and have indeed been feeling that rather persistently, or perhaps I should have…

And I should be revising Lord Chesterfield at this moment, but I’m not. My mind is wool-gathering away about Women and Fiction, which I am to read at Newnham in…

I have lost my writing board; an excuse for the anæmic state of this book. Indeed I only write now, in between letters, to say that Orlando was finished yesterday…

These are the last pages at the end of Orlando and it is twenty-five minutes to one; and I have written everything I have to write and on Saturday we go abroad. Yes…

Home again, as foretold, last night, and to settle the dust in my mind, write here. We have been across France and back—every inch of that fertile field traversed…

And I find myself again in the old driving whirlwind of writing against time. Have I ever written with it? But I vow I won’t spend longer at Orlando, which is a…

A lovely soaring summer day this; winter sent howling home to his arctic. I was reading Othello last night and was impressed by the volley and volume and tumble of…

The sun is out again; I have half forgotten Orlando already, since L. has read it and it has half passed out of my possession; I think it lacks the sort of…

So sick of Orlando I can write nothing. I have corrected the proofs in a week; and cannot spin another phrase. I detest my own volubility. Why be always spouting…

This is the last day of August and like almost all of them of extraordinary beauty. Each day is fine enough and hot enough for sitting out; but also full of…

. . . I was amused to find that when Rebecca West says “men are snobs” she gets an instant rise out of Desmond: so I retorted on him with the condescending phrase…

And this shall be written for my own pleasure. But that phrase inhibits me; for if one writes only for one’s own pleasure, I don’t know what it is that happens. I…

Father’s birthday. He would have been 96, 96, yes, today; and could have been 96, like other people one has known: but mercifully was not. His life would have…

L. has just been in to consult about a 3rd edition of Orlando. This has been ordered; we have sold over 6,000 copies; and sales are still amazingly brisk— 150 today…