Thank God I’m in the book business and have access to manuscript pages of forthcoming books. Apart from the deliciousness of being afforded an early peek, these are seriously the only literary format that’s perfect to read in the bathtub. And once read the loose pages work so well as impromptu bathmats! (I don’t mean to shock any authors - on the contrary, I hold too much reverence for actual books to let them get anywhere near water).

The holidays are perfect for indulging in long soaks and lengthy lives, and this season my bathtub reading is devoted to two new biographies: Edith Wharton and Leonard Woolf. Hermione Lee follows up her amazing book on Virginia Woolf, with an equally thorough examination of the life and work of Edith Wharton. Wharton, fluent in four languages and a resident of France for over 30 years nevertheless returned to the social and personal worlds of Americans as subjects for most of her 48 books. But Lee balances this literary preoccupation with her personal life and interest in European culture. She cleverly begins with a description of Wharton’s parents in 1848 on their Paris balcony, watching Louis Philippe fleeing across the Tuileries, to anticipate Edith’s own reaction to the French people during the First World War. This is a huge book, but rich in detail and wonderfully written. I’ll certainly be concurrently dipping into Wharton’s novels (back on dry land).

Overlapping some of this same literary time period is Victoria Glendinning’s new biography of Leonard Woolf. I’ve read her previous biographies of Rebecca West and Elizabeth Bowen and admire her insightful and concise style. Leonard was one of the more steady Bloomsberries but of course knew everyone in the literary circles of London; the book is sprinkled with delightful and gossipy anecdotes. He was also a serious writer in his own right and with Virginia, founded the very influential Hogarth Press. The details surrounding their publications are a fascinating treat for all serious booklovers.