(13 Oct.)

The Common Reader,

2nd series, published.

Begins The Years, at this point

called ‘The Pargiters’.

Roosevelt becomes President of USA; hunger marches start in

Britain; Scrutiny starts.

Huxley, Brave New World

1933

(May) Car tour of France and Italy. (5 Oct.) Flush published.

Deaths of Galsworthy and George Moore; Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Wells, The Shape of Things to Come

1934

Works on The Years. (9 Sept.) Death of Roger Fry.

Waugh, A Handful of Dust

Graves, I, Claudius

Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks

Toynbee, A Study of History

1935

Rewrites The Years. (May)

Car tour of Holland, Germany,

and Italy.

George V’s Silver Jubilee; Baldwin Prime Minister of National

Government; Germany re-arms;

Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains

T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

1936

(May–Oct.) Ill. Finishes The Years. Begins Three Guineas.

Death of George V; accession of Edward VIII; abdication crisis; accession of George VI; Civil War breaks out in Spain; first of the Moscow show trials; Germany re-occupies the Rhineland; BBC television begins (2 Nov.); deaths of Chesterton, Kipling, and Housman. Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

1937

(15 March) The Years published. Begins Roger Fry: A Biography. (18 July) Death in Spanish Civil War of Julian Bell, son of Vanessa.

Chamberlain Prime Minister; destruction of Guernica; death of Barrie.

Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

1938

(2 June) Three Guineas published. Works on Roger Fry, and begins to envisage Between the Acts.

German Anschluss with Austria;

Munich agreement; dismemberment of Czechoslovakia; first jet engine.

Beckett, Murphy

Bowen, The Death of the Heart

Greene, Brighton Rock

1939

VW moves to 37 Mecklenburgh Square, but lives mostly at Monk’s House. Works on Between the Acts. Meets Freud in London.

End of Civil War in Spain; Russo-German pact; Germany invades Poland (Sept.); Britain and France declare war on Germany (3 Sept.); deaths of Freud, Yeats, and Ford.

Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

1940

(25 July) Roger Fry published. (10 Sept.) Mecklenburgh Square house bombed. (18 Oct.) witnesses the ruins of 52 Tavistock Square, destroyed by bombs. (23 Nov.) Finishes Between the Acts.

Germany invades north-west Europe; fall of France; evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk; Battle of Britain; beginning of ‘the Blitz’; National Government under Churchill.

1941

(26 Feb.) Revises Between the Acts. Becomes ill. (28 March) Drowns herself in River Ouse, near Monk’s House. (July) Between the Acts published.

Germany invades USSR; Japanese destroy US Fleet at Pearl Harbor;

USA enters war; death of Joyce.

READING AND WRITING

THE DECAY OF ESSAY-WRITING

THE spread of education and the necessity which haunts us to impart what we have acquired have led, and will lead still further, to some startling results. We read of the over-burdened British Museum*—how even its appetite for printed matter flags, and the monster pleads that it can swallow no more. This public crisis has long been familiar in private houses. One member of the household is almost officially deputed to stand at the hall door with flaming sword and do battle with the invading armies. Tracts, pamphlets, advertisements, gratuitous copies of magazines, and the literary productions of friends come by post, by van, by messenger—come at all hours of the day and fall in the night, so that the morning breakfast-table is fairly snowed up with them.

This age has painted itself more faithfully than any other in a myriad of clever and conscientious though not supremely great works of fiction; it has tried seriously to liven the faded colours of bygone ages; it has delved industriously with spade and axe in the rubbish-heaps and ruins; and, so far, we can only applaud our use of pen and ink. But if you have a monster like the British public to feed, you will try to tickle its stale palate in new ways; fresh and amusing shapes must be given to the old commodities—for we really have nothing so new to say that it will not fit into one of the familiar forms. So we confine ourselves to no one literary medium; we try to be new by being old; we revive mystery-plays and affect an archaic accent; we deck ourselves in the fine raiment of an embroidered style; we cast off all clothing and disport ourselves nakedly. In short, there is no end to our devices, and at this very moment probably some ingenious youth is concocting a fresh one which, be it ever so new, will grow stale in its turn. If there are thus an infinite variety of fashions in the external shapes of our wares, there are a certain number—naturally not so many—of wares that are new in substance and in form which we have either invented or very much developed. Perhaps the most significant of these literary inventions is the invention of the personal essay.