Throughout her life, Virginia Woolf wrote short stories: she made small notes and put them aside until they became parts of novels or finalized works.
In 1921, the only collection published during her lifetime, entitled Monday or Tuesday (1921), was published.
In 1940, she decided to publish a new book, including both previously published stories—six from the book and six published in various magazines—and previously unpublished ones. She discussed this idea at length with her husband, Leonard Woolf, who published a collection of eighteen stories, The Haunted House, in 1941, after her death.
Woolf constructs the plots of her stories as observations of people, phenomena, or situations. And these observations give rise to reflections, and capture in words states, thoughts, and the search for truth.