The Bloomsbury Set and the house where it all started

October 20, 2019 Comments Off

More from our Literary Footprints 2019 guides, this time Stephen Benton reveals the origins of the famous Bloomsbury Set. Discover more about their lives, loves and homes on his walk Circles, Squares and Triangles – Virginia Woolf in Bloomsbury, full booking details are on Stephen’s walks page.

The Bloomsbury Set was a group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century which included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This was a loose collective of friends and relatives who lived, worked or studied together in and around the district of Bloomsbury. Some were married and there were many and varied affairs, creating a complex web of relationships.

It is said that literary wit, Dorothy Parker, once quipped about the Bloomsbury Set that:

“They were living in squares, painting in circles and loving in triangles.”

But actually it seems that she did not originate this. Rather she polished up an idea which others had had.

According to the site Quote Investigator the first time this comparison appeared was in the 1928 book “Fire Down Below” by the English novelist Margaret Irwin. During one scene the character Peregrine referred to Bloomsbury as Gloomsbury, and his child asked for clarification.

“Where’s that, Father?”

“It is a circle, my fair child, composed of a few squares where all the couples are triangles.”

So it seems Margaret Irwin is the leading candidate for creator of this quip based on the 1928 citation. Later another English author, Kingsley Martin, gave her credit in 1941 which provides additional evidence of her authorship.

And the place it all started was Number 46 Gordon Square, where four siblings of the Stephens family decided to move to after the death of their father in 1904. They were escaping from what they saw as the stultifying constraints of conventional Kensington where they had grown up. As unmarried “twenty somethings”, they broke with convention by setting up home on their own rather than moving in with their extended family.

The two boys (Adrian and Thoby) were educated at Trinity College Cambridge and had lots of ambitious and high-achieving intellectual friends. At that time girls were not able to graduate, though they could take classes, so Virginia studied at King’s College London and Vanessa at the Royal Academy.

They invited friends round on a Thursday evening for intellectual discussions and this loose grouping of friends, later spouses and lovers, developed into what we now know as The Bloomsbury Set.

The most famous member of the Set is probably Virginia Woolf (nee Stephens) and for most of the period from 1904 to her death in 1941 she had a London home in the area.

Follow the link for the full list of our Literary Footprints 2019 walks . If you’re feeling particularly curious (and energetic!) you can go on as many as you want by taking advantage of our great value season ticket which for only £49 allows you one free place on every Literary Footprints walk throughout October 2019!