112-485: The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf , John Maynard Keynes , E. M. Forster , Vanessa Bell , and Lytton Strachey . Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature , aesthetics , criticism , and economics , as well as modern attitudes towards feminism , pacifism , and sexuality . Although popularly thought of as
224-747: A conscientious objector , Grant joined his new lover, David Garnett , in setting up as fruit farmers in Suffolk. Both their applications were initially unsuccessful, but eventually the Central Tribunal agreed to recognise them on condition of their finding more appropriate premises. Vanessa Bell found the house named Charleston near Firle in Sussex. Relationships with Clive Bell remained amicable, and Bell stayed with them for long periods fairly often – sometimes accompanied by his own mistress, Mary Hutchinson. Between 1932 and 1934 Grant and Bell created
336-623: A "gaunt figure with a ragged red brown beard ... a formidable man." Her mother was a noted philanthropist, and her side of the family contained Julia Margaret Cameron , a celebrated photographer, and Lady Henry Somerset , a campaigner for women's rights. Virginia was named after her aunt Adeline, but because of her aunt's recent death the family decided not to use her first name. Both of the Stephens had children from previous marriages. Julia, from her marriage to barrister Herbert Duckworth , had George , Stella, and Gerald ; Leslie had Laura from
448-512: A certain sprightly self-reliance. None of the memoirists expected applause, approval or even what today we'd call "support". Their job was to entertain. The only frosty – if muddling – moment came when the homosexual Keynes described the heterosexual Bell as "gay". This turned out to be a reference to Bell's giddying career as a ladies' man. Early complaints focused on a perceived cliquiness: "on personal mannerisms—the favourite phrases ('ex-quisitely civilized', and 'How simply too extraordinary!'),
560-485: A concept of complex states of mind whose worth as a whole was not proportionate to the sum of its parts. For both Moore and Bloomsbury, the greatest ethic goods were "the importance of personal relationships and the private life", as well as aesthetic appreciation: "art for art's sake". Bloomsbury reacted against current upper class English social rituals, "the bourgeois habits ... the conventions of Victorian life" with their emphasis on public achievement, in favour of
672-650: A depression similar to one which she had earlier experienced. The onset of the Second World War, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz , and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. When Leonard enlisted in the Home Guard , Virginia disapproved. She held fast to her pacifism and criticised her husband for wearing what she considered to be "the silly uniform of
784-460: A formal group, it was a loose collective of friends and relatives closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, who at one point lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury , London. According to Ian Ousby , "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of
896-526: A joint lease on it. Located at the end of a tree-lined road, the house was in a Regency-Gothic style, "flat, pale, serene, yellow-washed", remote, without electricity or water and allegedly haunted. The sisters had two housewarming parties in January 1912. Virginia recorded the events of the weekends and holidays she spent there in her Asham Diary , part of which was later published as A Writer's Diary in 1953. In terms of creative writing, The Voyage Out
1008-521: A libertarian society with sexual freedom for all. Virginia appears not to have shown interest in practising the group's free love ideology, finding an outlet for her sexual desires only in writing. Around this time she began work on her first novel, Melymbrosia , which eventually became The Voyage Out (1915). In November 1911 Virginia and Adrian moved to a larger house at 38 Brunswick Square , and invited John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf to become lodgers there. Virginia saw it as
1120-470: A marriage to Minny Thackeray, a daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray . Both former spouses had died suddenly, Duckworth of an abscess and Minny Stephen in childbirth. Leslie and Julia Stephen had four children together: Vanessa , Thoby , Virginia, and Adrian . Virginia lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate until her father's death in 1904. She was, as she described it, "born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well-to-do parents, born into
1232-420: A more informal and private focus on personal relationships and individual pleasure. E. M. Forster for example approved of "the decay of smartness and fashion as factors, and the growth of the idea of enjoyment", and asserted that "if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country". The Group "believed in pleasure ... They tried to get
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#17327726006911344-511: A new diary at the start of 1897 and filled notebooks with fragments and literary sketches. Leslie Stephen died in February 1904, which caused Virginia to suffer another period of mental instability from April to September, and led to at least one suicide attempt. Woolf later described the period of 1897–1904 as "the seven unhappy years." As was common at the time, Julia Stephen did not believe in formal education for her daughters. Virginia
1456-711: A new opportunity: "We are going to try all kinds of experiments", she told Ottoline Morrell . This arrangement for a single woman living among men was considered scandalous. Several members of the Bloomsbury Group attained notoriety in 1910 with the Dreadnought hoax , in which they posed as a royal Abyssinian entourage (with Virginia as "Prince Mendax") and received a tour of the HMS Dreadnought by Virginia's cousin Commander Fisher , who
1568-687: A number of ways the blooming of Bloomsbury. Virginia Woolf was writing and publishing her most widely read modernist novels and essays , and E. M. Forster completed A Passage to India , a highly regarded novel on British imperialism in India . Forster wrote no more novels but he became one of England's most influential essayists. Duncan Grant, and then Vanessa Bell, had single-artist exhibitions. Lytton Strachey wrote his biographies of two queens, Queen Victoria (1921) and Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928). Desmond MacCarthy and Leonard Woolf engaged in friendly rivalry as literary editors, respectively of
1680-409: A previous proposal of marriage from Clive Bell. As a couple, their interest in avant-garde art would have an important influence on Woolf's further development as an author. After Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and Adrian moved into 29 Fitzroy Square , still very close to Gordon Square. The house had previously been occupied by George Bernard Shaw , and the area had been populated by artists since
1792-515: A quiet country retreat close to London, for the sake of her still-fragile mental health. In the winter of 1910 she and Adrian stayed at Lewes and started exploring the area of Sussex around the town. She soon found a property in nearby Firle , which she named "Little Talland House"; she maintained a relationship with that area for the rest of her life, tending to spend her time either in Sussex or London. In September 1911 she and Leonard Woolf found Asham House nearby, and Virginia and Vanessa took
1904-505: A stomach pump. Woolf's illness led to Duckworth delaying the publication of The Voyage Out until 26 March 1915. In the autumn of 1914 the couple moved to a house on Richmond Green , and in late March 1915 they moved to Hogarth House, also in Richmond , after which they named their publishing house in 1917. The decision to move to London's suburbs was made for the sake of Woolf's health. Many of Woolf's circle of friends were against
2016-401: A store room for many years. Grants' murals were eventually restored and the space reopened to the public in the 1990s. Grant's early affairs were exclusively homosexual. His lovers included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey , the future politician Arthur Hobhouse and the economist John Maynard Keynes , who at one time considered Grant the love of his life because of his good looks and
2128-408: A very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world." The house was described as dimly-lit, crowded with furniture and paintings. Within it, the younger Stephens made a close-knit group. Virginia showed an early affinity for writing. By the age of five she was writing letters. A fascination with books helped form a bond between her and her father. From
2240-619: A view across the Ouse towards the hills of the South Downs . Leonard Woolf describes this view as being unchanged since the days of Chaucer . The Woolfs would retain Monk's House until the end of Virginia's life; it became their permanent home after their London home was bombed, and it was where she completed Between the Acts in early 1941, which was followed by her final breakdown and suicide in
2352-508: A voluntary basis at Morley College , and would continue intermittently for the next two years. This work would later influence themes of class and education in her novel Mrs Dalloway . She made some money from reviews, including some published in church paper The Guardian and the National Review , capitalising on her father's literary reputation in order to earn commissions. Vanessa added another event to their calendar with
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#17327726006912464-632: A year's leave in 1911 after letters from Lytton Strachey describing Virginia's beauty enticed him back. He and Virginia attended social engagements together, and he moved into Brunswick Square as a tenant in December of that year. Leonard proposed to Virginia on 11 January 1912. Initially she expressed reluctance, but the two continued courting. Leonard decided not to return to Ceylon and resigned his post. On 29 May Virginia declared her love for Leonard, and they married on 10 August at St Pancras Town Hall . The couple spent their honeymoon first at Asham and
2576-554: Is dedicated to her life and work. She has been the subject of plays, novels, and films. Woolf is commemorated by statues, societies dedicated to her work, and a building at the University of London . Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on 25 January 1882 at 22 Hyde Park Gate in South Kensington , London, to Julia (née Jackson) and Sir Leslie Stephen . Her father was a writer, historian, essayist, biographer, and mountaineer, described by Helena Swanwick as
2688-456: Is generally assumed that Grant's sexual relations with Bell ended in the months before Angelica was born (Christmas, 1918), they continued to live together for more than 40 years. During that time, their relationship was mainly domestic and creative; they often painted in the same studio together, praising and critiquing each other's work. Living with Vanessa Bell was no impediment to Grant's relationships with men, either before or after Angelica
2800-524: The New Statesman and The Nation and Athenaeum , thus fuelling animosities that saw Bloomsbury dominating the cultural scene. Roger Fry wrote and lectured widely on art; meanwhile, Clive Bell applied Bloomsbury values to his book Civilization (1928), which Leonard Woolf saw as limited and elitist, describing Bell as a "wonderful organiser of intellectual greyhound racing tracks". In the darkening 1930s, Bloomsbury began to die: "Bloomsbury itself
2912-808: The Brancacci Chapel , in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine , Florence . Grant also made a study of the Portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro, one half of the diptych by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi and was greatly impressed by the frescoes of Piero in the Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo . On his return, at the advice of Simon Bussy, Grant made a copy of the Angel musicians in Piero's Nativity in
3024-738: The Caillebotte bequest of French Impressionists . In January 1907, and again in the summer of 1908, Grant spent a term at the Slade School of Art . In 1908, Grant painted a portrait of John Maynard Keynes , whom he had met the previous year, while the two were on holiday in Orkney. A year later, the pair would share rooms on Belgrave Road . In 1909, Grant visited Michael and Gertrude Stein in Paris and saw their collection that included paintings by, among others, Picasso and Matisse . In
3136-501: The Cambridge Apostles , an elite university debating society that a number of them had been members of. These rules emphasised candour and openness. Among the 125 memoirs presented, Virginia contributed three that were published posthumously in 1976, in the autobiographical anthology Moments of Being . These were 22 Hyde Park Gate (1921), Old Bloomsbury (1922) and Am I a Snob? (1936). On 14 December 1922 Woolf met
3248-578: The Cambridge Apostles , included Saxon Sydney-Turner , Lytton Strachey , Clive Bell and Desmond MacCarthy . Their social gatherings, referred to as "Thursday evenings", were a vision of recreating Trinity College. This circle formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group . Later, it would include John Maynard Keynes , Duncan Grant , E. M. Forster , Roger Fry , Leonard Woolf, and David Garnett . Virginia began teaching evening classes on
3360-643: The Ceylon Civil Service to marry Virginia in 1912. Cambridge Apostle friendships brought into the group Desmond MacCarthy, his wife Molly, and E. M. Forster. The group met not only in their homes in Bloomsbury, central London , but also at countryside retreats. There are two significant ones near Lewes in Sussex: Charleston Farmhouse , where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved in 1916, and Monk's House (now owned by
3472-580: The Clapham Sect ". It was an informal network of an influential group of artists, art critics, writers and an economist, many of whom lived in the West Central 1 district of London known as Bloomsbury . They were "spiritually" similar to the Clapham group who supported its members' careers: "The Bloomsberries promoted one another's work and careers just as the original Claphamites did, as well as
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3584-610: The Grafton Galleries in Mayfair , which included work by the likes of Gauguin , Matisse and Van Gogh , where he was said to be particularly interested in the paintings of Paul Cézanne . During the summer of 1911, Grant was invited by Roger Fry to contribute to the redecoration of the dining room at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University ). Grant composed two oil paintings to fit with
3696-573: The National Trust ), in Rodmell , owned by Virginia and Leonard Woolf from 1919. Much about Bloomsbury appears to be controversial, including its membership and name: indeed, some would maintain that "the three words 'the Bloomsbury group' have been so much used as to have become almost unusable". Close friends, brothers, sisters, and even sometimes partners of the friends were not necessarily members of Bloomsbury: Keynes's wife Lydia Lopokova
3808-470: The Quantock Hills before travelling to the south of France and on to Spain and Italy. On their return they moved to Clifford's Inn , and began to divide their time between London and Asham. Virginia Woolf had completed a penultimate draft of her first novel The Voyage Out before her wedding, but undertook large-scale alterations to the manuscript between December 1912 and March 1913. The work
3920-667: The Trinity May Ball in 1900. These men formed a reading group they named the Midnight Society, which the Stephen sisters would later be invited to. After their father's death, Vanessa and Adrian decided to sell 22 Hyde Park Gate in South Kensington and move to Bloomsbury . This was a much cheaper area—they had not inherited much and were unsure about their finances. The Duckworth brothers did not join
4032-526: The suffrage movement . Virginia also attended a number of lectures at the King's College Ladies' Department. Although Virginia could not attend Cambridge, she was to be profoundly influenced by her brother Thoby's experiences there. When Thoby went to Trinity in 1899, he befriended a circle of young men, including Clive Bell , Lytton Strachey , Leonard Woolf (whom Virginia would later marry), and Saxon Sydney-Turner , to whom he would introduce his sisters at
4144-644: The "Friday Club" and Thoby ran "Thursday Evenings", which became the basis for the Bloomsbury Group, which to some was really "Cambridge in London". Thoby's premature death in 1906 brought them more firmly together and they became what is now known as the "Old Bloomsbury" group who met in earnest beginning in 1912. In the 1920s and 1930s the group shifted when the original members died and the next generation had reached adulthood. The Bloomsbury Group, mostly from upper middle-class professional families, formed part of "an intellectual aristocracy which could trace itself back to
4256-529: The "Friday Club", dedicated to the discussion of the fine arts. This introduced some new people into their circle, including Vanessa's friends from the Royal Academy of Arts and Slade School of Fine Art (where she had been studying), such as Henry Lamb and Gwen Darwin , and also the eighteen-year-old Katherine Laird ("Ka") Cox , who was about to attend Newnham College, Cambridge . Cox would become Virginia's intimate friend. These new members brought
4368-456: The 1930s brought new criticism from younger writers of "what the last lot had done (Bloomsbury, Modernism, Eliot) in favour of what they thought of as urgent hard-hitting realism"; while " Wyndham Lewis 's The Apes of God , which called Bloomsbury élitist, corrupt and talentless, caused a stir" of its own. The most telling criticism, however, came perhaps from within the Group's own ranks, when on
4480-595: The 50-piece Famous Women Dinner Service at Charleston, commissioned by the art historian and museum director Kenneth Clark . In 1935, Grant was selected along with nearly 30 other prominent British artists of the day to provide works of art for the RMS Queen Mary then being built in Scotland. Grant was commissioned to provide paintings and fabrics for the first class Main Lounge. In early 1936, after his work
4592-502: The Apostles they also encountered the analytic philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell who were revolutionizing British philosophy at the start of the 20th century. Distinguishing between ends and means was a commonplace of ethics, but what made Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) so important for the philosophical basis of Bloomsbury thought was Moore's conception of intrinsic worth as distinct from instrumental value . As with
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4704-467: The Bloomsbury Group into contact with another, slightly younger, group of Cambridge intellectuals who Virginia would refer to as the "Neo-Pagans". The Friday Club continued until 1912 or 1913. In the autumn of 1906 the siblings travelled to Greece and Turkey with Violet Dickinson. During the trip Vanessa fell ill with appendicitis . Both Violet and Thoby contracted typhoid fever ; Thoby died on 20 November. Two days after Thoby's death, Vanessa accepted
4816-469: The Home Guard". After the Second World War began, Woolf's diary indicates that she was obsessed with death, which figured more and more as her mood darkened. On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself by walking into the fast-flowing River Ouse near her home, after placing a large stone in her pocket. Her body was not found until 18 April. Her husband buried her cremated remains beneath an elm tree in
4928-533: The Lighthouse and The Waves . Both at Hyde Park Gate and Talland House, the family socialised with much of the country's literary and artistic circles. Frequent guests included literary figures such as Henry James and George Meredith , as well as James Russell Lowell . The family did not return after 1894; a hotel was constructed in front of the house which blocked the sea view, and Julia Stephen died in May
5040-633: The National Gallery, London. Grant was introduced to Vanessa Bell (then Vanessa Stephen) by Pippa Strachey at the Friday Club in the autumn of 1905. From 1906, thanks to a gift of £100 from an aunt, Grant spent a year in Paris studying at the Académie de La Palette , Jacques-Émile Blanche 's school. During this period, he visited the Musée du Luxembourg and saw, among other paintings,
5152-407: The Stephen brothers, were members of "the exclusive Cambridge society, the ' Apostles '". At Trinity in 1899 Lytton Strachey , Leonard Woolf , Saxon Sydney-Turner and Clive Bell became good friends with Thoby Stephen , and it was through Thoby and Adrian Stephen 's sisters Vanessa and Virginia that the men met the women of Bloomsbury when they came down to London. In 1905 Vanessa began
5264-493: The Stephens in their new home; Gerald did not wish to, and George got married during the preparations, leaving to live with his new wife. Virginia lived in the house for brief periods in the autumn – she was sent away to Cambridge and Yorkshire for her health – and settled there permanently in December 1904. From March 1905 the Stephens began to entertain their brother Thoby's intellectual friends at Gordon Square. The circle, who were largely members of
5376-546: The Woolfs founded their Hogarth Press , which would publish T. S. Eliot , Katherine Mansfield , and many others including Virginia herself along with the standard English translations of Freud . Then in 1918 Lytton Strachey published his critique of Victorianism in the shape of four ironic biographies in Eminent Victorians , which added to the arguments about Bloomsbury that continue to this day, and "brought him
5488-694: The Woolfs returned to Bloomsbury, taking out a ten-year lease at 52 Tavistock Square , from where they ran the Hogarth Press from the basement, where Virginia also had her writing room. 1925 saw the publication of Mrs Dalloway in May followed by her collapse while at Charleston in August. In 1927, her next novel, To the Lighthouse , was published, and the following year she lectured on Women & Fiction at Cambridge University and published Orlando in October. Her two Cambridge lectures then became
5600-473: The age of 10, with her sister Vanessa, she began an illustrated family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News , chronicling life and events within the Stephen family, and modelled on the popular magazine Tit-Bits . Virginia would run the Hyde Park Gate News until 1895, a few weeks before her mother's death. In 1897 Virginia began her first diary, which she kept for the next twelve years. In
5712-459: The arts." The historian C. J. Coventry , resurrecting an older argument by Raymond Williams , disputes the existence of the group and the extent of its impact, describing it as "curio" for those interested in Keynes and Woolf. All male members of the Bloomsbury Group, except Duncan Grant , were educated at Cambridge (either at Trinity or King's College ). Most of them, except Clive Bell and
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#17327726006915824-479: The background of the Cambridge spies , Andrew Sinclair wrote about the Bloomsbury group: "rarely in the field of human endeavour has so much been written about so few who achieved so little". American philosopher Martha Nussbaum was quoted in 1999 as saying "I don't like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida ". Raymond Williams saw Bloomsbury as
5936-552: The basis for her major essay A Room of One's Own in 1929. Virginia wrote only one drama, Freshwater , based on her great-aunt Julia Margaret Cameron , and produced at her sister's studio on Fitzroy Street in 1935. 1936 saw the publication of The Years , which had its origin in a lecture Woolf gave to the National Society for Women's Service in 1931, an edited version of which would later be published as "Professions for Women". Another collapse of her health followed
6048-599: The brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group . In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf , and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press , which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and permanently settled there in 1940. Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society. In 1915, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out , through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company . Her best-known works include
6160-585: The century's most influential economists. He died in 1946 after being much involved in monetary negotiations with the United States. The diversity yet collectivity of Later Bloomsbury's ideas and achievements can be summed up in a series of credos that were made in 1938, the year of the Munich Agreement . Virginia Woolf published her radical feminist polemic Three Guineas that shocked some of her fellow members, including Keynes who had enjoyed
6272-518: The claims of the State". In March 1920 Molly MacCarthy began the Memoir Club to help Desmond and herself write their memoirs; and also "for their friends to regroup after the war (with the proviso that they should always tell the truth)". It met until 1956 or 1964. The club was made up of members of the Bloomsbury Group, a loose collective of artists, writers, intellectuals, and philosophers. Some of
6384-529: The concept of form above content in works of art": it has been suggested that, with their "focus on form ...Bell's ideas have come to stand in for, perhaps too much so, the aesthetic principles of the Bloomsbury Group". The establishment's hostility to post-impressionism made Bloomsbury controversial, and controversial they have remained. Clive Bell polemicized post-impressionism in his widely read book Art (1914), basing his aesthetics partly on Roger Fry's art criticism and G. E. Moore's moral philosophy; and as
6496-401: The core members of the Bloomsbury Group included Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Sir Desmond MacCarthy, and Duncan Grant. The rules of the club were simple, and derived from the Apostles, the elite debating society that so many of the Bloomsbury men had joined at Cambridge. The person presenting their memoir
6608-463: The distinction between love (an intrinsic state) and monogamy (a behavior, i.e. instrumental), Moore's differentiation between intrinsic and instrumental value allowed the Bloomsburies to maintain an ethical high-ground based on intrinsic merit, independent of, and without reference to, the consequences of their actions. For Moore, intrinsic value depended on an indeterminable intuition of good and
6720-480: The eve of war Keynes gave a "nostalgic and disillusioned account of the pure sweet air of G. E. Moore, that belief in undisturbed individualism, that Utopianism based on a belief in human reasonableness and decency, that refusal to accept the idea of civilisation as 'a thin and precarious crust' ... Keynes's fond, elegiac repudiation of his "early beliefs", in the light of current affairs ("We completely misunderstood human nature, including our own")". In his book on
6832-539: The following year. In the 1939 essay "A Sketch of the Past" Woolf first wrote about experiencing sexual abuse by Gerald Duckworth at a young age. There is speculation that this contributed to her mental health issues later in life. There are also suggestions of sexual impropriety from George Duckworth during the period that he was caring for the Stephen sisters. Julia Stephen fell ill with influenza in February 1895, and never properly recovered, dying on 5 May, when Virginia
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#17327726006916944-439: The garden of Monk's House , their home in Rodmell , Sussex. In her suicide note, addressed to her husband, she wrote: Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group . His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major in the army, and much of his early childhood
7056-494: The gentler A Room of One's Own (1929). Keynes read his My Early Beliefs to The Memoir Club. Clive Bell published an appeasement pamphlet (he later supported the war), and E. M. Forster wrote an early version of his famous essay " What I Believe " with its choice of personal relations over patriotism: his quiet assertion in the face of the increasingly totalitarian claims of both left and right that "personal relations ... love and loyalty to an individual can run counter to
7168-416: The group members show an overlapping, interconnected similarity of ideas and attitudes that helped to keep the friends and relatives together, reflecting in large part the influence of G. E. Moore : "the essence of what Bloomsbury drew from Moore is contained in his statement that 'one's prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge'". Through
7280-405: The head of the household, and bring Vanessa and Virginia out into society . This was not a rite of passage that resonated with either girl; Virginia's view was that "Society in those days was a very competent, perfectly complacent, ruthless machine. A girl had no chance against its fangs. No other desires—say to paint, or to write—could be taken seriously." Her priority was her writing; she began
7392-507: The highly successful Howards End in 1910, the group were late developers. There were stable marriages and varied and complicated affairs among the individual members. Lytton Strachey and his cousin and lover Duncan Grant became close friends of the Stephen sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Duncan Grant had affairs with siblings Vanessa Bell and Adrian Stephen, as well as David Garnett, Maynard Keynes, and James Strachey. Clive Bell married Vanessa in 1907, and Leonard Woolf returned from
7504-410: The incredulous, weirdly emphasised Strachey voice". After World War I, as the members of the Group "began to be famous, the execration increased, and the caricature of an idle, snobbish and self-congratulatory rentier class , promoting its own brand of high culture began to take shape": as Forster self-mockingly put it, "In came the nice fat dividends, up rose the lofty thoughts". The growing threats of
7616-610: The intervening generations of their grandparents and parents." A historical feature of these friends and relations is that their close relationships all pre-dated their fame as writers, artists, and thinkers. The group had ten core members: In addition to these ten, Leonard Woolf , in the 1960s, listed as "Old Bloomsbury" Adrian and Karin Stephen , Saxon Sydney-Turner , and Molly MacCarthy , with Julian Bell , Quentin Bell and Angelica Bell , and David Garnett as "later additions". Except for Forster, who published three novels before
7728-699: The invention of an ageing and lonely Leonard Woolf , seeking to lift himself and his friends from obscurity. To Williams, the only two so-called "members" of any significance in their respective fields were Keynes and Virginia Woolf. Williams unfavourably compared the Bloomsbury Group to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Arts and Crafts movement , finding that the older groups were more radical and consequential. Books and articles Museums and libraries Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf ( / w ʊ l f / ; née Stephen ; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941)
7840-482: The literary people of mark...clever young writers and barristers, chiefly of the radical persuasion...we used to meet on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, to smoke and drink and discuss the universe and the reform movement". From 1897 Virginia received private tuition in Latin and Ancient Greek. One of her tutors was Clara Pater , and another was Janet Case , with whom she formed a lasting friendship and who involved her in
7952-689: The maximum of pleasure out of their personal relations. If this meant triangles or more complicated geometric figures, well then, one accepted that too". Yet at the same time, they shared a sophisticated, civilized, and highly articulated ideal of pleasure. As Virginia Woolf put it, their "triumph is in having worked out a view of life which was not by any means corrupt or sinister or merely intellectual; rather ascetic and austere indeed; which still holds, and keeps them dining together, and staying together, after 20 years". Politically, Bloomsbury held mainly left-liberal stances (opposed to militarism , for example); but its "clubs and meetings were not activist, like
8064-525: The most notable of which is an image of St Paul's Cathedral during the 1941 London Blitz as seen from the basement of a nearby bombed building. In the late 1950s Grant was commissioned to decorate the Russell Chantry of Lincoln Cathedral . Grant modelled the figure of Christ in these murals on his lover Paul Roche . The Cathedral authorities closed the Chantry in the 1960s and it was used as
8176-527: The nearby River Ouse on 28 March. 1920 saw a postwar reconstitution of the Bloomsbury Group, under the title of the Memoir Club , which as the name suggests focussed on self-writing, in the manner of Proust 's A La Recherche , and inspired some of the more influential books of the 20th century. The Group, which had been scattered by the war, was reconvened by Mary ('Molly') MacCarthy who called them "Bloomsberries", and operated under rules derived from
8288-477: The novel's completion The Years . The Woolf's final residence in London was at 37 Mecklenburgh Square (1939–1940), destroyed during the Blitz in September 1940; a month later their previous home on Tavistock Square was also destroyed. After that, they made Sussex their permanent home. After completing the manuscript of her last novel (posthumously published), Between the Acts (1941), Woolf fell into
8400-403: The novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, such as A Room of One's Own (1929). Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism . Her works, translated into more than 50 languages, have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. A large body of writing
8512-408: The originality of his mind. Through Strachey, Grant became involved in the Bloomsbury Group, where he made many such great friends including Vanessa Bell . He would eventually live with Vanessa Bell who, though she was a married woman, fell deeply in love with him and, one night, succeeded in seducing him; Bell very much wanted a child by Grant, and she became pregnant in the spring of 1918. Although it
8624-756: The period of the First World War in Asham, but were obliged by the owner to leave in 1919. "In despair" they purchased the Round House in Lewes, a converted windmill, for £300. No sooner had they bought the Round House, than Monk's House in nearby Rodmell came up for auction, a weatherboarded house with oak-beamed rooms, said to date from the 15th or 16th century. The Woolfs sold the Round House and purchased Monk's House for £700. Monk's House also lacked running water, but came with an acre of garden, and had
8736-420: The political organisations to which many of Bloomsbury's members also belonged", and they would be criticised for that by their 1930s successors, who by contrast were "heavily touched by the politics which Bloomsbury had rejected". The campaign for women's suffrage added to the controversial nature of Bloomsbury, as Virginia Woolf represented the group in the fictional The Years and Night and Day works about
8848-607: The previous century. Duncan Grant lived there, and Roger Fry would move there in 1913. Virginia resented the wealth that Vanessa's marriage had given her; Virginia and Adrian lived more humbly by comparison. The siblings resumed the Thursday Club at their new home, while Gordon Square became the venue for a play-reading society. During this period, the group began to increasingly explore progressive ideas, with open discussions of members' homosexual inclinations, and nude dancing from Vanessa, who in 1910 went so far as to propose
8960-592: The previous decade she had become one of the century's most famous feminist writers with three more novels, and a series of essays including the moving late memoir " A Sketch of the Past ". It was also in the 1930s that Desmond MacCarthy became perhaps the most widely read—and heard—literary critic with his columns in The Sunday Times and his broadcasts for the BBC. John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) made him one of
9072-405: The sources of my joy". While at Asham, in 1916 Leonard and Virginia found a farmhouse to let about four miles away, which they thought would be ideal for her sister. Eventually, Vanessa came down to inspect it, and took possession in October of that year, as a summer home for her family. The Charleston Farmhouse was to become the summer gathering place for the Bloomsbury Group. Leonard Woolf
9184-539: The spring of 1882, Leslie rented a large white house in St Ives, Cornwall . The family would spend three months each summer there for the first 13 years of Virginia's life. Although the house had limited amenities, its main attraction was the view overlooking Porthminster Bay towards the Godrevy Lighthouse . The happy summers spent at Talland House would later influence Woolf's novels Jacob's Room , To
9296-650: The suffrage movement. Roger Fry joined the group in 1910. His Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 involved Bloomsbury in a second revolution following on the Cambridge philosophical one. This time the Bloomsbury painters were much involved and influenced. Fry and other Bloomsbury artists rejected the traditional distinction between fine and decorative art. These "Bloomsbury assumptions" are reflected in members' criticisms of materialistic realism in painting and fiction, influenced above all by Clive Bell's "concept of 'Significant Form', which separated and elevated
9408-484: The summer, with an introduction from Simon Bussy, Grant visited Matisse himself, then living at Clamart , Paris. In November 1909, Grant moved to 21 Fitzroy Square, where he occupied two rooms on the second floor of the building on the west side of the square. A few doors away, at 29 Fitzroy Square, lived Adrian and Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf ). Grant would later recall: 'a close friendship sprang up between Adrian Stephen and myself and I had only to tap on
9520-651: The theme of illustrating London on Holiday . Both his paintings, Football and Bathing, bear the influence of early Italian art and Byzantine mosaics. Grant also drew on his exposure to the work of the post-impressionists; The Times reported of his depiction of the figures that 'Mr Grant has used all his remarkable powers of draughtsmanship to represent the act of swimming rather than any individual swimmers.’ In February 1910, Grant, along with Horace de Vere Cole , Virginia Stephen , Adrian Stephen and others, disguised themselves as an Abyssinian royal delegation and fooled their way on to HMS Dreadnought . The delegation
9632-621: The triumph he had always longed for ... The book was a sensation". The following year came J. M. Keynes's influential attack on the Versailles Peace Treaty : The Economic Consequences of the Peace established Maynard as a Neo-Classical economist and political economist of international eminence. Bloomsbury members became known for distinctive garments; Woolf in particular was opposed to conventions surrounding formal attire, such as "dressing for dinner". The 1920s were in
9744-530: The upheavals and dislocations of war, in many ways were even strengthened by them". Most but not all of them were conscientious objectors. Politically, the members of Bloomsbury had liberal and socialist leanings. Though the war dispersed Old Bloomsbury, the individuals continued to develop their careers. E. M. Forster followed his successful novels with Maurice which he could not publish because it treated homosexuality untragically. In 1915, Virginia Woolf brought out her first novel, The Voyage Out ; and in 1917
9856-444: The war came he argued that "in these days of storm and darkness, it seemed right that at the shrine of civilization - in Bloomsbury, I mean - the lamp should be tended assiduously". Old Bloomsbury's development was affected, along with much of modernist culture, by the First World War : "the small world of Bloomsbury was later said by some on its outskirts to have been irretrievably shattered", though in fact its friendships "survived
9968-407: The war, and Woolf herself opposed it from a standpoint of pacifism and anti-censorship. Leonard was exempted from the introduction of conscription in 1916 on medical grounds. The Woolfs employed two servants at the recommendation of Roger Fry in 1916; Lottie Hope worked for a number of other Bloomsbury Group members, and Nellie Boxall would stay with them until 1934. The Woolfs spent parts of
10080-544: The window to be let in. The maid told Virginia "that Mr Grant gets in everywhere". But very irregular as my visits were, they became more and more a habit, and I think they soon became frequent enough to escape notice.' In June 1910 Grant exhibited with the Friday Club at the Alpine Club Gallery. Later that year Grant would visit Roger Fry 's Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition at
10192-420: The wisdom of allowing a girl of fifteen the free run of a large and quite unexpurgated library. But my father allowed it. There were certain facts – very briefly, very shyly he referred to them. Yet "Read what you like", he said, and all his books...were to be had without asking. Another source was the conversation of their father's friends, to whom she was exposed. Leslie Stephen described his circle as "most of
10304-515: The writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West , wife of Harold Nicolson . This period was to prove fruitful for both authors, Woolf producing three novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and The Waves (1931) as well as a number of essays, including " Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown " (1924) and " A Letter to a Young Poet " (1932). The two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941. Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian and Vanessa. Between 1924 and 1940
10416-577: Was a homosexual with bisexual leanings". In Grant's later years, his lover, the poet Paul Roche (1916–2007), whom he had known since 1946, took care of him and enabled Grant to maintain his accustomed way of life at Charleston for many years. Grant and Roche's relationship was strong and lasted even during Roche's marriage and five children he had by the late 1950s. Roche was made co-heir of Grant's estate. Grant eventually died in Roche's home in 1978. Duncan Grant's remains are buried beside Vanessa Bell's in
10528-408: Was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington , London. She was the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight that included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell . She
10640-414: Was awarded several art prizes. From about 1899/1900 to 1906, Grant lived with his aunt and uncle, Sir Richard and Lady Strachey and their children. When Grant was younger, he accompanied Lady Strachey to "picture Sunday" which gave him the opportunity to meet with eminent painters. Lady Strachey was able to persuade Grant's parents that he should be allowed to pursue an education in art. In 1902, Grant
10752-643: Was born. Angelica grew up believing that Vanessa's husband Clive Bell was her biological father; she bore his surname and his behaviour toward her never indicated otherwise. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell had formed an open relationship , although she herself apparently never had any further affairs. Duncan, in contrast, had many physical affairs and several serious relationships with other men, most notably David Garnett , who would one day marry Angelica and have four daughters with her, including Amaryllis Garnett . Grant's love and respect for Bell, however, kept him with her until her death in 1961. Angelica wrote: "(Grant)
10864-455: Was completed there, and much of Night and Day . The house itself inspired the short story "A Haunted House", published in A Haunted House and Other Short Stories . Asham provided Woolf with much-needed relief from the pace of London life, and was where she found a happiness that she expressed in her diary on 5 May 1919: "Oh, but how happy we've been at Asheham! It was a most melodious time. Everything went so freely; – but I can't analyse all
10976-477: Was educated by his governess, Alice Bates. Along with Rupert Brooke , Grant attended Hillbrow School , Rugby, 1894–99, where he received lessons from an art teacher and became interested in Japanese prints. During this period, Grant spent his school holidays at Hogarth House, Chiswick, with his grandmother, Lady Grant. He attended St Paul's School, London (as a boarder for two terms), 1899–1901, where he
11088-440: Was educated in a piecemeal fashion by her parents: Julia taught her Latin, French, and history, while Leslie taught her mathematics. She also received piano lessons. She also had unrestricted access to her father's vast library, exposing her to much of the literary canon. This resulted in a greater depth of reading than any of her Cambridge contemporaries. Later, Virginia recalled: Even today there may be parents who would doubt
11200-460: Was enrolled by his aunt at Westminster School of Art ; he attended for the next three years. While at Westminster, Grant was encouraged in his studies by Simon Bussy , a French painter and lifelong friend of Matisse , who went on to marry Dorothy Strachey . In the winter of 1904–5, Grant visited Italy where, commissioned by Harry Strachey , he made copies of part of the Masaccio frescoes in
11312-518: Was greeted by a band and given a tour of the battleship. As flag ship of the Home Fleet, the Dreadnought was a high-profile target for the pranksters, and as such the hoax attracted much attention in the press once discovered. Grant is best known for his painting style, which developed in the wake of French post-impressionist exhibitions mounted in London in 1910. He often worked with, and
11424-571: Was hardly any longer a focus". A year after publishing a collection of brief lives, Portraits in Miniature (1931), Lytton Strachey died; shortly afterwards Carrington shot herself. Roger Fry died in 1934. Vanessa and Clive's eldest son, Julian Bell , was killed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War . Virginia Woolf wrote Fry's biography , but with the coming of war again her mental instability recurred, and she drowned herself in 1941. In
11536-559: Was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London . There, she studied classics and history, coming into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury , where, in conjunction with
11648-630: Was influenced by, another member of the group, art critic and artist Roger Fry. As well as painting landscapes and portraits , Fry designed textiles and ceramics. After Fry founded the Omega Workshops in 1913, Grant became co-director with Vanessa Bell , who was then involved with Fry. Although Grant had always been actively homosexual, a relationship with Vanessa blossomed, which was both creative and personal, and he eventually moved in with her and her two sons by her husband Clive Bell . In 1916, in support of his application for recognition as
11760-540: Was installed in the Lounge, directors from the Cunard Line made a walk-through inspection of the ship. When they saw what Grant had created, they immediately rejected his works and ordered it removed. Grant is quoted in the book The Mary: The Inevitable Ship , by Potter and Frost, as saying: During World War Two, Grant received a short-term commission from the War Artists' Advisory Committee for two paintings,
11872-605: Was not aware of the joke. Horace de Vere Cole , who had been one of the masterminds of the hoax along with Adrian, later leaked the story to the press and informed the Foreign Office, leading to general outrage from the establishment. During the latter Bloomsbury years Virginia travelled frequently with friends and family, to Dorset and Cornwall as well as further afield to Paris, Italy and Bayreuth. These trips were intended to avoid her suffering exhaustion from extended periods in London. The question arose of Virginia needing
11984-417: Was obliged to be absolutely candid, while the people doing the listening were instructed to extend an equal openness: "No one has the right to be shocked or aggrieved by what is said." Given that everyone in the Memoir Club, apart from Forster, had slept with at least one other member, this sounds like a recipe for hurt feelings and flouncings-out. But if Bloomsbury prided itself on plain-speaking, it also valued
12096-504: Was one of Thoby Stephen's friends at Trinity College, Cambridge, and had encountered the Stephen sisters in Thoby's rooms while visiting for May Week between 1899 and 1904. He recalled that in "white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands, their beauty literally took one's breath away". In 1904 Leonard Woolf left Britain for a civil service position in Ceylon , but returned for
12208-528: Was only 13. This precipitated what Virginia later identified as her first "breakdown"—for months afterwards she was nervous and agitated, and she wrote very little for the subsequent two years. Stella Duckworth took on a parental role. She married in April 1897, but moved to a house very close to the Stephens to continue to support the family. However, she fell ill on honeymoon and died on 19 July 1897. Subsequently George Duckworth took it upon himself to act as
12320-461: Was only reluctantly accepted into the group, and there were certainly "writers who were at some time close friends of Virginia Woolf, but who were distinctly not 'Bloomsbury': T. S. Eliot , Katherine Mansfield , Hugh Walpole ". Another is Vita Sackville-West , who became " Hogarth Press 's best-selling author". Members cited in "other lists might include Ottoline Morrell , or Dora Carrington , or James and Alix Strachey ". The lives and works of
12432-531: Was spent in India and Burma . He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant , 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, KCB, GCMG, and sometime Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Grant was born on 21 January 1885, to Major Bartle Grant and Ethel Isabel McNeil in Rothiemurchus , Aviemore , Scotland. Between 1887 and 1894, the family lived in India and Burma, returning to Scotland every two years. During this period, Grant
12544-460: Was subsequently accepted by her half-brother Gerald Duckworth's publishing house, and she found the process of reading and correcting the proofs extremely emotionally difficult. This led to one of several breakdowns over the subsequent two years; Woolf attempted suicide on 9 September 1913 with an overdose of Veronal , being saved with the help of Maynard Keynes' surgeon brother Geoffrey Keynes who drove Leonard to St Bartholomew's Hospital to fetch
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