The Bloomsbury Group
Amy, Dorothy and Rup
According to Virginia Woolf, "on our about December 1910 human character changed."[i] This change Woolf referred to can be seen as the moving away from the Victorian ideas on art and literature toward the ideas that would be the hallmarks of Modernism.[ii] While Woolf admits that the choice of 1910 as this breaking point was "something of a joke" it was also a time of political and civil unrest in England, as well as the year of the first Post-Impressionist exhibition.[iii] These new ideas, including labor unrest, Irish unrest, and a growing movement for womans' suffrage were occuring simultaneously as the growth of a group of friends who met to discuss ideas on art, literature and politics among other topics concerning the "modern" mind in a house in Bloomsbury, London.
This gathering of friends, appropriately named "The Bloomsbury Group," stemmed from the death of Victorian author Leslie Stephen in 1904.[iv] His four children, Thoby, Vanessa, Virginia and Adrian moved into a house at 46 Gordon Square Bloomsbury where they enjoyed unparalleled freedoms for people their age. Soon after they got settled, Thoby brought home "some of the most gifted and original young men of his generation."[v] These young men, some of whom had been involved in a select group of Cambridge intellectuals called the Apostles, along with the remaining Stephens children (Thoby died in 1906 of typhoid fever) formed the original Bloomsbury group.[vi] While many members came and went, a few people, namely Virginia Woolf (maiden name Stephen), Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell (maiden name Stephen), Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Robert Fry and E.M. Forester formed the base of the group.
The Bloomsbury group was first and foremost a "society of equals, who had a similar background, who had few worldly pretensions, and who, although each member was an individual with a distinctive contribution to make to the group, had common interests and shared a point of view."[vii] This common bond of friendship, did not, however, prevent the members from criticizing each other's views, but rather allowed them to more freely challenge one anothers' opinions.[viii] While the group was a gathering of individuals who all had differing fields of study and philosophies, there were some underlying similarities in the aesthetics of the group. All of its members were influenced early on by G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, a treatise concerned with finding a way to decide "'what things have intrinsic value and in what degrees.'"[ix] As a direct result of a passage from this book, the group concerned itself largely with "the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects."[x] While the attainment of beauty was the central goal of the group, they did not invest the term "beauty" with any ethical implications, leaving them free to enjoy and create art without judging it "by its moral value or by its reaction upon life."[xi] By freeing art from the confines of social morality, they also allowed the artist to transcend the need to fill a prescribed role in society, thus opening him up to more artistic experimentation. As Johnstone states, "The artist's business, Bloomsbury believes, is to use his intellect and sensibility to construct works that will satisfy us both for their aesthetic unity and for the vision of life which they give us. Beyond this, Bloomsbury has no demands to make of him, and no rules to offer."[xii] This lack of overpowering instruction and freedom for individual thought allowed the group to possess "the virtues...of coherency and open-mindedness"--two factors which no doubt helped attract such a diverse group of people.[xiii]
One of these most prominent (and, like her fellow 'Bloomsberries', infamous) members was Virginia Woolf, originally Virginia Stephen, born in London in 18821. By 1904, both her parents and her sister Stella had died, and she moved with her remaining sister and two brothers to Bloomsbury, beginning to write for the Times Literary Supplement the following year2. From 1905 onward, she would write more than 500 essays, as well as the novels she is known for. Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880, and in 1899 attended Cambridge where he joined the elite "Apostles", the group that would eventually form the root of the Bloomsbury group3. As a "Bloomsberry", he met Virginia and proposed to her three times before she finally accepted. They were married in 19122.
Virginia published her first book in 1915, The Voyage Out. More followed, including To The Lighthouse in 1927, A Room of One"s Own in 1929, and The Waves in 19312. As a writer, she is known for her attention to feminist issues and the place of women in the community of writers and scholars3. Throughout her life, Virginia suffered from mental breakdowns, starting with a prolonged breakdown in 1907 after the death of her brother Thoby. She never ceased to be prone to bouts of depression after this, and her mental illness led to a final attack in 1941 when she finally drowned herself in the river Ouse1.
After resigning from the Ceylon Civil service and his marriage to Virginia, both in 1912, Leonard Woolf published his first novel, The Village and the Jungle, in 1913, quickly followed by The Wise Virgins in 19133. With the outbreak of the war, Leonard turned his energy and his writing to politics, and to caring for Virginia, who was again suffering from depression. Together they bought a small printing press and began the "Hogarth Press" in 1917. With this, they began projects of pamphlets and small books of their friends, such as T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster, Virginia's sister participating by producing the covers. About the time of Virginia's death, he began an affair with a married woman called Trekkie. Leonard moved next door to her and they shared the weekends together, and Trekkie spent separate holidays with each of the men in her life. This went on for 25 years3. Leonard wrote the multi-volume history, After the Deluge, from 1931 to 1951, and some of his other most important books in the last decade of his life, such as Downhill All the Way in 1967 and, at the last, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters in 1969. He died in August that same year3.
Virginia's sister, Vanessa, did more as an artist than illustrate for her sister's printing press. Her brother Thoby introduced her to his friend Clive Bell, who then attempted to woo her3. Similar to Leonard's courting of Virginia, he had to propose three times before he was accepted, the final proposal coming after the trauma of Thoby's death. Clive, most known as an art and literary critic, also wrote, publishing Proust in 1929 and Old Friends in 1956, and had his writing included in collections of essays and critiques. He died in 19644.
Vanessa had two sons, though she continued to paint. One of them, Quentin, would write the Bloomsbury in 1968 about his parents. In 1910 they met Roger Fry at one of the Bloomsbury "Friday Clubs" Vanessa had begun years earlier for artists to gather at, and the three of them went on holiday together3. As if history were a cheap romance novel, Vanessa fell ill and was nursed back to health by Roger, and this began a love affair. Clive, rather than being miffed, took up an ex-mistress of his own. The three eventually bumped into another artist, a man named Duncan Grant, known to be a promiscuous homosexual3. Vanessa took up an affair with him, and she gave birth to a daughter, though they pretended it was the daughter of her and her husband Clive. Vanessa spent the rest of her life living together with Duncan. They moved during the First World War to the country side, still only four miles from Virginia and Leonard, and Clive would come to visit. In 1934 Roger Fry, still her close friend, died, and in 1937 her son Julian died in the Spanish Civil War. Her daughter was estranged from her the year after Virginia's death, after finding out her true parentage, and married Duncan's ex-lover David Garnett. Like I said about history . . . Vanessa died in 1961 of heart failure3.
Roger Eliot Fry was born in 1866 in a wealthy Quaker family of Highgate, London. Like most of the members of the Bloomsbury group, he studied at King's College, Cambridge where he achieved a first position in the Natural Science "tripos"1. He married Helen Coombe in 1896 but was not destined for marital bliss. She was diagnosed as incurably insane and, from 1910, spent her life in a mental institution leaving Fry with the responsibility of looking after their two children " Julian and Pamela. He entered into a brief affair with Vanessa Stephen (Virginia Woolf's sister) which ended in 1913 when she married Duncan Grant. He finally found conjugal happiness when he Helen Anrep in 1924. She left her husband and was a great support to Fry till his death in 19342. One of the oldest members of the Bloomsbury Group, Fry had a profound impact on guiding the aestheticism of the group in a markedly Post-Impressionist direction3. In 1910, he organized the first Post-Impressionist exhibition for the Grafton Galleries in London2. He was the only member who started his career in the 1890's with Giovanni Bellini (1899). His most famous work, Vision and Design (1920), not only established his position as one of Britain's leading critic but is held to be a keystone work in the development of the modernist theory. He emphasized the idea of "form" over "content"; he believed that artists should try to communicate more through color and abstraction rather than attempt to capture a physical reality4. He was appointed the Slade Professor at Cambridge in 1934 but could not finish his lectures on the nature of art history before his death in 1934. These were published as Last Lectures in 1939
John Maynard Keynes drew his first breath on the 5th of June, 1883 in Cambridge. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge and earned his degree in Mathematics. In 1908 he started a serious affair with painter and fellow member of the Bloomsbury group, Duncan Grant5. He joined the British Civil Service after Cambridge and wrote his monumental work, Indian Currency and Finance (1913). Keynes was the representative of the British Treasury at the Treaty of Versailles in 19196 but resigned because he thought the terms were too harsh for the Germans. In 1923, he became the chair of Nation, a liberal periodical. He married the Russian ballet dancer Lydia Lopokova in 1925. He is known for his contribution to the field of economics. Time magazine had honored Keynes by placing him within the greatest twenty minds of the twentieth century. Through A Treatise on Money, (1930) and General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, (1936) he revolutionized economic thought regarding unemployment7. The Bloomsbury group was his "life outside of economics". While remaining a faithful member he contributed relatively little to the purely literary output of the group, developing instead into one of the greatest economists of all time. Keynes suffered a heart failure and breathed his last in 1946.
Edward Morgan Forster was born on January 1, 1987 in London. His father died before he was two years old and much of his childhood was a whirlwind of female relations. He attended (surprise!) King's College, Cambridge but unlike most of the other members of the Bloomsbury group he traveled extensively to many parts of the world. He tavelled to Greece and Italy after college and then tutored in Germany. In 1905 he wrote his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread8. He wrote Howards End in 1910 and then started his efforts on Maurice " an examination of homosexual sentiments which finally saw publication in 1971. He traveled in India between 1912 and 1913 but served in Egypt during the First World War. He returned to India in 1921 and worked on what many critics consider his greatest (and last) work, A passage to India (1924) which described India under British rule. He had strong connections with the Bloomsbury group and is even held to have referred to it "as the only genuine movement in English civilization"9. Many critics see Forster and Virginia Woolf as presenting an alternative to the idealistic writings of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and other writers. He refused the knighthood in 1949 but did accept an Order of Merit in 1969. He died in 1970.
The Bloomsbury Group was built on a gathering of close friends. This nature of its inception, the style of its functioning and the diversity of its members allowed for a breadth of perception very rarely seen in English literary history. From the time of it's formation in 1904 until its final break up in the 1940s, the Bloomsbury Group had a large influence on the definition of modernism in many fields, most notably literature and art.
[i] Stansky, Peter. On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996, pg 1.
[ii] Stansky. December 1910. 1996, pg 2.
[iii] Stansky. December 1910. 1996. pg 3.
[iv] Stansky. December 1910. 1996. pg 8.
[v] Johnstone, J.K. The Bloomsbury Group: A Study of E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and their Circle. New York: The Noonday Press, 1954, pg 5.
[vi] Johnstone. The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 8.
[vii] Johnstone. The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 17.
[viii] Stansky. December 1910. 1996. pg 9.
[ix] Johnstone. The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 19.
[x] Johnstone. The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 41.
[xi] Johnstone. The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 45.
[xii] Johnstone, The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 93.
[xiii] Johnstone, The Bloomsbury Group. 1954, pg 95.
1. Dawley E. Janice; The Bloomsbury Group " Roger Fry, 2005 http://therem.net/bloom-roger.htm2. Mantex; The Bloomsbury Group, 2003 http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/a319/rog-fry.htm3. Rosenbaum, S.P. "Preface to a Literary History of the Bloomsbury Group", 1981. New Literary History, The University of Virginia4. Tate Online; Archive Journeys " Bloomsbury, 2004 http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/bio_fry_ideas.htm5. Lesbian & Gay Staff Association, London South Bank University; John Maynard Keynes, 1996 http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~stafflag/jmkeynes.html6. The History of Economic Thought; Profiles " John Maynard Keynes, 2002 http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/keynes.htm7. The Library of Economics and Liberty; Bios " John Maynard Keynes, 1993 http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Keynes.html8. The Literature Network; E.M. Forster, 2000 http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Keynes.html9. Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory; Bloomsbury Group, 1997
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/bloomsbury_group.html
1Wilson, Trish; The Bloomsbury Group: Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Snobbishness, Art and Writing, Intellectual Pursuits, and Black Beetles, 1997 http://www.feminista.com/archives/v1n5/wilson.htmlwilson.html 2The Literature Network, Virginia Woolf, 2004 http://www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/ 3Mantex, The Bloomsbury Group, 2003 http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/a319/bloom-00.htm 4Gracyk, Theodore, Annotations for Clive Bell, Art, 2003 http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/bell_annotations.htm http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/clive_bell.htm
Speaking of conclusions... did you see this? "Diarist Frances Partridge, last survivor of the literary Bloomsbury Group's most famous love quadrangle, has died at the age of 103." This was February last year. Sheesh...
