Virginia Woolf’s diary, 1937

Sunk once more in the happy tumultuous dream: that is to say began Three Guineas this morning and can’t stop thinking it. My plan is to write out now, without more…

I turn my eyes away from the Press as I go upstairs, because there are all the review copies of The Years packed and packing. They go out next week: this is my last…

I’m off again, after five days lapse (writing Faces and Voices) on Three Guineas: after a most dismal hacking got a little canter and hope now to spin ahead. Odd…

I’m so entirely imbued with Three Guineas that I can hardly jerk myself away to write here. (Here in fact I again dropped my pen to think about my next…

As will be seen on the last page my spiritual temperature went up with a rush; why I don’t know, save that I’ve been having a good gallop at Three Guineas. Now I…

Oh the relief! L. brought the Lit. Sup. to me in bed and said It’s quite good. And so it is; and Time and Tide says I’m a first rate novelist and a great lyrical…

I am in such a twitter owing to two columns in the Observer praising The Years that I can’t, as I foretold, go on with Three Guineas. Why I even sat back just now…

Now this is one of the strangest of my experiences—“they” say almost universally that The Years is a masterpiece. The Times says so. Bunny etc.: Howard Spring. If…

No, I am not going to titivate Gibbon—that is condense by a thousand words. Too much screw needed, and my brain unstrung. Merely scribbling here: over a log fire,…

How I interest myself! Quite set up and perky today with a mind brimming because I was so damnably depressed and smacked on the cheek by Edwin Muir in the Listener…

Another curious idiosyncrasy. Maynard thinks The Years my best book: thinks one scene, E. and Crosby, beats Tchekov’s Cherry Orchard—and this opinion though from…

“Such happiness wherever it is known is to be pitied for tis surely blind.” Yes, but my happiness isn’t blind. That is the achievement, I was thinking between 3 and…

Isn’t it shameful to write here first thing, not to tackle Congreve? But my brain after talking to Miss Sarton, to Murray, to Ann gave out after dinner, so that I…

It’s ill writing after reading Love for Love—a. masterpiece. I never knew how good it is. And what exhilaration there is in reading these masterpieces. This superb…

Just back from M.H. but I can’t and won’t write anything—too bothered and dithered. Also, I screwed my head tight—too tight—knocking together a little obituary of…

Will another novel ever swim up? If so, how? The only hint I have towards it is that it’s to be dialogue: and poetry: and prose; all quite distinct. No more long…

Not much to say. It’s true, the only life this summer is in the brain. I get excited writing. Three hours pass like 10 minutes. This morning I had a moment of the…

Yes, we are back at Tavistock Square; and I’ve never written a word since September 27th. That shows how every morning was crammed to the margin with Three Guineas.…