In 1915, The Voyage Out, which had been held up from publication for two years, appeared. It received fairly good reviews and Virginia was cited as being an important new novelist. Immediately she began Night and Day. In 1917, Virginia began to return to a normal social life and it was during this time that she met Katherine Mansfield and Middleton Murry. It was also during this period that Leonard and Virginia founded the Hogarth Press. Many myths surround the Press, supposing it to have been the toy of eccentric moneyed dilettantes. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Woolfs had been living off Virginia's investments and had very little money. Leonard bought the hand press in order to occupy Virginia's mind with something manual. During 1917 and 1918, there was not a single month that she did not have reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and, of course, she was working on her second novel. Leonard was fearful of another breakdown. But this creative tempo was typical of Virginia's output all during her life. She always tried to keep a flow of creative writing pouring during the mornings, then, during the afternoons and in odd hours, she would write critical essays as relief and as a different sort of mental discipline.
The Hogarth Press was begun in the Woolf's dining room, with the press on the table and Virginia and Leonard teaching themselves to print by the instructions in a 16-page manual. Their first publication was Two Stories — one by Virginia, "The Mark on the Wall," and one by Leonard, "Three Jews." The book was entirely hand-printed, hand-bound, and sold 134 copies. Ten years later, the Press was recognized as an important publishing house and their publications' schedule was so full that the printing had to be jobbed out. During this time, the Woolfs published Kew Gardens by Virginia and Poems by T. S. Eliot (including "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" and "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"); later the Press published another of Eliot's poems, The Waste Land.
