THE NOTE BOOKS OF A WOMAN ALONE

a critical edition of the 1935 text

edited by Ella Ophir and Jade McDougall

dust jacket

And so I learnt that the one necessity
for such as I am in life is one's own room,
where I may be myself, and neither apologize for,
nor justify, my presence.


I have it at last. Could any woman
be happier than I am to-night?

Evelyn Wilson (a pseudonym) was born in Manchester in about 1886. She began work as a live-in governess at age seventeen, and after ten years took a position at a London employment agency for domestic workers. Unmarried and self-supporting, she lived on meagre wages for the next twenty-one years. But her rented room was a sanctuary, a place she could read and write. Her notebooks were found after her death. They were edited by Mary Geraldine Ostle and published by J.M. Dent in 1935.