Bloomsbury Writers and Literary Lovers
Bloomsbury Writers and Literary Lovers
October 11, 2013 Comments Off on Bloomsbury Writers and Literary LoversJenni Bowley writes about why she finds the Bloomsbury Group so interesting:
Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf
The Bloomsbury Group are often referred to as an artistic and intellectual circle who lived in squares and loved in triangles. In the early 20th Century, Bloomsbury was a relatively unfashionable district that has become known for this group of writers, artists, intellectuals and political thinkers. Maybe they should be referred to as the “Marmite Group” – people seem to either love them or hate them! That was true in their own time, when they were described by DH Lawrence as a “horror of little swarming selves” and it’s still true today when the focus is on their unconventional behaviour and complicated love-lives. Whatever you may think of their personal lives, I think that their contribution is in danger of being under-rated: Roger Fry introduced the Post-Impressionists (Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso and others) to a suspicious art world and made them popular; John Maynard Keynes changed economic thinking and Virginia Woolf changed the novel. On Sunday afternoon I’ll be walking around the Bloomsbury Squares and piecing together the complex world of the Bloomsbury Group and their contemporaries.
Jenni’s walk is on Sunday 13th October at 2pm, details here
