The story was published on May 12, 1919, by Hogarth Press, a publishing enterprise cofounded by Woolf and her husband Leonard in 1917. For the first edition, Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell fashioned two woodcut illustrations to accompany the text. When the third edition was printed in 1927, Bell's illustrations appeared on each page throughout the text.

The story was also reprinted in Woolf's Monday or Tuesday (1921) and in A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944), edited by Leonard Woolf. In the past decades it has been anthologized many times, representing a slice of Woolf's artistic mastery and reflection of her keen insight into what it means to be human.