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A gorgeous new collection featuring 26 of Gertrude Stein's most enrapturing and essential short writings--a carefully curated, accessible entry point into her best and most joyful worksBetween the French-flapped covers of this elegant paperback collection, readers will rediscover Gertrude Stein as the bearer of a joyfully radical literary vision. A bold experimenter, her writing sparks with vitality, relishing in rhythm, repetition, sound and colour in its central vision: to prise apart language and association and find thrilling new ways to express the true essence of her subject with charming joie de vivre.Stein considered her shorter writings to be the truest expressions of her enrapturing style. Her fascination with people and personalities can be located in expressive portraits of close friends Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Cezanne, Jean Cocteau, and Juan Gris, whilst her decades-long relationship with Alice B. Toklas is immortalised with shimmering eroticism. There are also playful meditations on her unique writing process, conveying her serious delight in meddling with conventions of grammar and composition.Confirmed Table of Contents: Ada Portrait of Mabel Dodge Matisse Picasso Miss Fur and Miss Skeene Flirting at the Bon Marche Susie Asado Preciosilla Sacred Emily One Ladies Voices Accents in Alsace Idem the Same Cezanne A Book Concluding with As A Wife Has a Cow Van or Twenty Years Later If I Told Him Juan Gris Identify a Poem What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes Advertisments What Happened Jean Cocteau A Movie A Waterfall and Piano Saint in Seven

A SUNDAY TIMES LITERARY NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (AS CHOSEN BY AUTHORS) ••LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE•• ••SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE••'Outstanding. I'll be recommending this all year.'SARAH BAKEWELL'A beautiful and deeply moving book.'SALLY ROONEY'I like this London life... the street-sauntering and square-haunting.'Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925 Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of interwar Bloomsbury, was home to activists, experimenters and revolutionaries; among them were the modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and writer and publisher Virginia Woolf. They each alighted there seeking a space where they could live, love and, above all, work independently. Francesca Wade's spellbinding group biography explores how these trailblazing women pushed the boundaries of literature, scholarship, and social norms, forging careers that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own.'Elegant, erudite and absorbing, Square Haunting is a startlingly original debut, and Francesca Wade is a writer to watch.'FRANCES WILSON'A fascinating voyage through the lives of five remarkable women - moving and immersive.'EDMUND GORDON

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • “A beautiful and deeply moving book.”—Sally Rooney, author of Normal PeopleAn engrossing group portrait of five women writers, including Virginia Woolf, who moved to London's Mecklenburgh Square in search of new freedom in their lives and work.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY POPMATTERS “I like this London life... the street-sauntering and square-haunting.”—Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925 In the early twentieth century, Mecklenburgh Square—a hidden architectural gem in the heart of London—was a radical address. On the outskirts of Bloomsbury known for the eponymous group who “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles,” the square was home to students, struggling artists, and revolutionaries. In the pivotal era between the two world wars, the lives of five remarkable women intertwined at this one address: modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. In an era when women's freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they could live, love, and—above all—work independently. With sparkling insight and a novelistic style, Francesca Wade sheds new light on a group of artists and thinkers whose pioneering work would enrich the possibilities of women's lives for generations to come.Praise for Square Haunting“A fascinating voyage through the lives of five remarkable women... moving and immersive.”—Edmund Gordon, author of The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography“Elegant, erudite, and absorbing, Square Haunting is a startlingly original debut, and Francesca Wade is an author to watch.”—Frances Wilson, author of Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey“Outstanding... I'll be recommending this all year.”—Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Café“I much enjoyed Francesca Wade's book. It almost made me wish I belonged to the pioneering generation of women spoiling eggs on the gas ring and breaking taboos.”—Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche