The fourth volume of this marvellous diary deals with a period of suffering and anxiety in Virginia Woolf’s life; though, as ever, she was able to abstract herself from the suffering caused by external events, to her creative and critical work, she was by no means so secure from the anxiety sometimes caused by her problems in the latter.

It begins with the final stages of the writing of The Waves, and its publication; and it ends with the deep trouble she began to feel about The Years getting out of hand. As usual, as in the case of To the Lighthouse, she was unhappy about the completed form