For Woolf, it ignited a creative fire. In the summer of 1923, about halfway through her work on Mrs. Dalloway, she wrote, “My theory is that at 40 one either increases the pace or slows down. Needless to say which I desire.” She went on to catalog her extensive ongoing projects, including an essay on Chaucer, the revision of a slew of old essays, and what she termed “ ‘serious’ reading.” And all of this came during a sustained burst of fiction writing that Woolf—whose work had been derailed by mental breakdowns and spells of illness—relished. From the fall of 1922 through 1924, she got Mrs. Dalloway on paper at a furious rate; in doing so, she reckoned with the incongruity of middle age as she lived it.