Book Review: Rooms of Their Own

Rooms of Their Own

Where Great Writers Write

by Alex Johnson

Pub Date 19 Apr 2022  

 Quarto Publishing Group – White Lion,  Frances Lincoln

 Biographies & Memoirs 

I am reviewing a copy of Rooms of Their Own through Quarto Publishing Group, White Lion and Netgalley:

How do you write?  What is it you require from your room or desk?  Do you have a favorite pen, typewriter?  Did they find a  routine, that fit their creativity perfectLy?  These are the questions that were asked about writers, crossing centuries, genres and continents.

In Rooms of their own you will not only discover the unique spaces, habits and rituals in which famous writers created their most notable works, but you’ll also discover how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. 

Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and those who need people, music and whisky. Meet novelists who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and some will scribble on anything – including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers – each of these stories confirms that there is no 'best way' to write.

In this book you’ll discover James Baldwin, writing in the small hours of the morning in his Paris apartment, to DH Lawrence writing at the foot of a towering Ponderosa pine tree, to the Brontë sisters managing in a crowded co-working space, this book takes us into the lives of some of history's greatest ever writers, with each writing space illustrated in evocative watercolour by James Oses.

If you’re looking for a quick peek into the ways which writers like Maya Angelou, and Ray Bradbury I highly recommend Rooms of Their Own.

Five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!