Francesca Wade

Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars (2020), which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Granta and other places. She lives in London. 

Praise for Square Haunting: 

'Excellent . . .  an impressive debut that puts [Wade] firmly on the literary map' Sunday Times 

'A feminist, psycho-geographical, cross-generational group biography . . . Wade’s book rises above the publishing cliches to tell a deeper story about women’s autonomy in the early 20th century, about their work and education, politics and activism. What emerges is an eloquent, pellucid, sometimes poignant study of five female intellectuals, each of whom disdained convention to fulfil their potential as thinkers and writers . . . Has a lovely movement to it – a decadently pre-internet feel. It’s not just the period setting, it’s in the texture of Wade’s prose, which is careful and measured, with none of the forced perkiness I’ve come to associate with digital-era feminism . . .  I didn’t expect the book to be so moving. I found myself suddenly overcome in the final pages' Observer

'If ever there was a love letter to having a room of one’s own, then Square Haunting is it.' Red

'Square Haunting is an elegant, meticulously researched evocation of time and place' Financial Times

'Very readable and enjoyable . . . vividly evoked.' Margaret Drabble, New Statesman

'The women’s characters and situations leap off the page, helped by the kind of details – from interior decor to what they wore – that bring prose alive . . . It is a measure of their vividness, and the depth of Wade’s research, that these figures far outshine TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Freud and Keynes, who while secondary characters in this story, are more accustomed to the limelight . . . endlessly interesting, unshowy, tightly argued and large-hearted.' Aida Edemariam, Guardian