Between the Acts, or Pointz Hall as it was initially called, was written as a counterpoint to Woolf's biography of Roger Fry. Fry had died in September 1934, and his family had asked Woolf if she would be his biographer. She took on the task, but found it a difficult and at times burdensome one, and her diary entries suggest that it became the focus for her feelings about the ‘grind’ of working with obdurate ‘facts’. Woolf had felt anxious about beginning another novel after the tortures of The Years: ‘I am doubtful if I shall ever write another novel,’ she wrote in June 1937 (D. v. 91). In the event, however, she seems to have written Between the Acts with relative ease and considerable pleasure as an alternative to the biography. In May 1938 she described herself as ‘living in the solid world of Roger, & then (again this morning) in the airy world of Poyntz Hall’ (D. v. 141).

The question mark Woolf placed over her writing of further novels is also a questioning of the novel as a form. When the shape of a new novel did ‘swim up’, it was hybrid and manyfaceted: ‘The only hint I have towards it is that its to be dialogue: a poetry: & prose; all quite distinct’ (D. v. 105). This was written in August 1937, as Woolf was completing Three Guineas. In the spring of 1938 she wrote in her diary: ‘Last night I began making up again: Summers night: a complete whole: that 's my idea’ (D. v. 133). A few days later she wrote: