Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1934

I have let all this time—three weeks at Monks—slip because I was there so divinely happy and pressed with ideas—another full flood of Pargiters or Here and Now (odd…

This, the 9th May, was our last day and fine. So we saw Warwickshire—but I’ve been reading the Monologue and note how oddly another style infects—at its best: thick…

I broke off, after sticking my Irish papers into the old book, and felt I suppose a little shiver. Can’t be anything I said to myself after all that holiday; but it…

At last today, which is Tuesday, after striking the match on the box despairingly, sterilely—oh I was so overcome with rigidity and nothingness—a little flame has…

Very very hot: day altered so as to go out after tea. A drought over the world. In flood with Here and Now, praise be. Yet very wary: only just now I made up the…

Ah hah—but now, having despatched that entirely disagreeable day, Worthing and Mr. Fears, representing Rodmell Labour Party for an hour after dinner, I’m free to…

I’m worried too with my last chapters. Is it all too shrill and voluble? And then the immense length, and the perpetual ebbs and flows of invention. So divinely…

Yes, I think owing to the sudden rush of two wakeful nights, making up early mornings rather, I think I see the end of Here and Now (or Music or Dawn or whatever I…

The lesson of Here and Now is that one can use all kinds of “forms” in one book. Therefore the next might be poem, reality, comedy, play; narrative, psychology all…

I don’t think I have ever been more excited over a book than I am writing the end of—shall it be Dawn? Or is that too emphatic, sentimental. I wrote like a— forget…

Roger died on Sunday. Tomorrow we go up, following some instinct, to the funeral. I feel dazed; very wooden. Women cry, L. says: but I don’t know why I cry—mostly…

I was glad we went to the service on Thursday. It was a very hot summer’s day. And all very simple and dignified. Music. Not a word spoken. We sat there, before the…

Yes, but my head will never let me glory sweepingly; always a tumble. Yesterday morning the old rays of light set in; and then the sharp, the very sharp pain over…

A violent rain storm on the pond. The pond is covered with little white thorns; springing up and down: the pond is bristling with leaping white thorns, like the…

The trouble is I have used every ounce of my creative writing mind in The Pargiters. No headache (save what Elly calls typical migraine—she came to see L. about his…

Quite cured today. So the W. L. illness lasted two days. Helped off by old Ethel’s bluff affection and stir yesterday by buying a blouse; by falling fast asleep…

Ideas that came to me last night dining with Clive; talking to Aldous* and the Kenneth Clarks. About Roger’s life: that it should be written by different people to…

Two teeth out with a new anaesthetic: hence I write here, not seriously. And this is another pen. And my brain is very slightly frozen, like my gums. Teeth become…

And am now, 10:30 on Thursday morning, November 15th, about to tackle rereading and re-writing The Pargiters: an awful moment. 12:45. Well, that horrid plunge has…

Isn’t it odd? Some days I can’t read Dante at all after revising The Ps.: other days I find it very sublime and helpful. Raises one out of the chatter of words. But…

Talk with Francis yesterday. He is dying: but makes no bones about it. Only his expression is quite different. Has no hope. The man says he asks every hour how long…