Phyllis Bottome

A good friend of mine reads a lot of work by British women writers from the twentieth century, especially the middle decades. I sometimes pick up books for her if I see something good in a used bookstore, and that’s how I first read D.E. Stevenson and Angela Thirkell (who I came to detest). Years ago I gave her a book by Phyllis Bottome, partly because it was a mid-century British woman writer in a nice paperback from Pan or Fontana or the like, and partly because of the name, which is childishly amusing. My friend is also a great admirer of Virginia Woolf and the whole Bloomsbury Group, so when I saw the six volume set The Letters of Virginia Woolf in a store and confirmed she didn’t have it, I grabbed it. While I was browsing some of them I was surprised to see Phyllis Bottome mentioned! This is on p. 248 of The Sickle Side of the Moon: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1932–1935, edited by Nicol Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1979). It’s from a letter Woolf sent…