Rooms of Their Own by Alex Johnson

If walls could speak, what fabulous tales they would tell, and the rooms of celebrated writers in particular are full of stories. The rooms in which favourite authors wrote hold an especial fascination, and I have made pilgrimages to many of my most-loved writers’ homes: Jane Austen, Louisa M Alcott, The Brontës, Emily Dickinson, Beatrix Potter, Thomas Hardy etc, and I have stood at the tables and desks at which they wrote, gazed at the pens and quills and chairs and writing slopes and imagined I could feel the lingering presence of their owners; that elusive stamp of genius on their environment.

Emily Dickinson found freedom to write at the tiny desk in her bedroom. Illustration by James Oses from ‘Rooms of Their Own’.

It was Virginia Woolf who famously stated that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,’ and in Rooms of Their Own: Where Great Writers Write,* Alex Johnson examines the writing spaces of a varied range of great writers, from classic authors such as Agatha Christie, James Baldwin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou and Charles Dickens to famous contemporary writers, including Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. I was thrilled to receive a press copy of this engrossing book and have enjoyed dipping into it most evenings.

Rooms of Their Own is a beautiful book to read, with thick, quality paper and pages big enough to fully admire the delightful illustrations by James Oses. Indeed, it’s these illustrations that make the book for me: James Oses does a superb job in capturing a sense of personality, as well as place, through his drawings.  Alex Johnson writes a succinct profile on each author, but still manages to squeeze in plenty of interesting tidbits on their creative routines, from the mundane (P. G. Wodehouse started each week day punctually at 7.30am), to the unusual (D. H. Lawrence eschewed a desk in favour of writing under trees). I loved learning that Agatha Christie would brainstorm her plots in the bath, that Arthur Conan Doyle had a travelling trunk which transformed into a bookcase and desk and that Balzac’s diet seemed to consist almost entirely of coffee (when desperate for an even greater caffeine hit, he even resorted to eating ground coffee beans neat).

Isabel Allende’s ‘sacred space’ where she starts writing new novels on 8 January. Illustration by James Oses from ‘Rooms of Their Own.’

As well as profiling each author’s spatial writing preferences, Alex Johnson also writes about some common themes in the creative process. He examines writers who wrote lying down, the connection between typewriters and authors, writers and their chairs, ink colour choices, pets and exercise habits, as well as daily word count targets and the universal experience of receiving a rejection letter. It is entertaining to read about the idiosyncrasies of world-renowned authors, but also illuminating to observe some of the common habits of success. As Alex Johnson notes in his introduction to the book, most writers appreciate as distraction-free an environment as possible, find writing in the morning the most productive habit and, finally, make the best of whatever their writing circumstances (Anthony Trollope wrote most of Barchester Towers on the train during his work commute).

Rooms of Their Own is a book that any bibliophile would enjoy and would make a fantastic gift, either for yourself or for any other book-lovers in your life. You’ll be tempted to put it on the coffee table, as it’s a beautiful volume to flick through, or keep it on your bedside table so you can dip in and out of it before falling asleep.

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I have received permission from the publisher to include the illustrations by James Oses in this post.