Description

‘That word, “vacation,” makes me sweat.’ Coco Chanel on taking a break
‘You must do it irregardless, or it will eat its way out of you.’ Zora Neale Hurston on writing
‘One has to choose between the Life and the Project.’ Susan Sontag on choosing art

From Vanessa Bell and Charlotte Bronte to Nina Simone and Jane Campion, here are over one hundred and forty female writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, poets, choreographers, and filmmakers on how they create and work.

Barbara Hepworth sculpted outdoors and Janet Frame wore earmuffs as she worked to block out noise. Kate Chopin wrote with her six children ‘swarming around her’ whereas the artist Rosa Bonheur filled her bedroom with the sixty birds that inspired her work. Louisa May Alcott wrote so vigorously – skipping sleep and meals – that she had to learn to write with her left hand to give her cramped right hand a break.

From Isak Dinesen subsisting on oysters, champagne and amphetamines, to Isabel Allende’s insistence that she begins each new book on 8 January, here are the working routines of over 140 brilliant female painters, composers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers and performers.

Filled with details of the large and small choices these women made, Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals Women at Work is a source of fascination and inspiration.

‘An admirably succinct portrait of some distinctly uncommon lives’ – Meryle Secrest

Publisher Review

A fascinating little book -- Financial Times on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work Mason Currey has carefully compiled the daily habits and personal foibles of 161 great writers, artists, scientists and thinkers, including one who stood on his head to cure creative block. By the end of this book, our carpet-glue habit looks normal -- DBC Pierre, Guardian, on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work A chance to see what great lives look like when the triumphs, dramas, disruptions and divorces have been all but boiled away. It will fascinate anyone who wonders how a day might best be spent, especially those who have wondered of their artistic heroes, as a baffled Colette once did of George Sand: how the devil did they manage? -- Guardian, on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work A trove of entertaining anecdote and thought-provoking comparison -- Daily Telegraph, on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work I just can't recommend this book enough -- Lena Dunham on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work Utterly fascinating . . . This book is the ultimate retort to the flaneurs who dream about the novel/screenplay/painting they would create if only they had the time -- Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times on Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work