Rural Hours

Three writers, Virginia Woolf, Rosamond Lehmann and Sylvia Townsend Warner, each moved to the countryside, and Harriet Baker tells how the move changed each of them. Baker meets her subjects at quiet moments, looking at an insect on a windowsill, jotting down a recipe or digging potatoes, and shows them, after long spells of creative doubt and private disappointment, invigorated by new landscapes and by the daily work of making a home. In the country, she argues, each woman found a path to recovery, to sexual and political awakening, and to personal freedom and creative flourishing, and began new experiments in form and in living. It took the Young Writer of the Year Award from the Sunday Times.

Tyler Cowen put it on his list of the best non-fiction of 2024, calling it beautifully written and very British, likely to frustrate readers looking for generalization but recommended all the same.