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Bloomsbury
Literature
126 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
4 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Quentin Bell
66 books22 followersQuentin Claudian Stephen Bell was an English art historian and author.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 4, 2016
This is not about the Bloomsbury set as a group of people, but rather about a few shared ideals that loosely united them against the intellectual climate of their time. Readers interested in the history of ideas will be better pleased than those looking for biographical detail. It is let down slightly by the author's need to defend his subjects against detractors in long forgotten quarrels. Wonderful pictures.
March 29, 2025
Bell is an artist and historian, but of course the interest here is his insider's knowledge of the characters and the times. He may not have been 'old Bloomsbury', but his mother and father certainly were, and many of the people they associated with.
Bell brings a clear and lucid eye to his recounting of Bloomsbury's development and its members' interactions with each other and society at large. This short study is an interesting education on how a small group can make a significant impact on the wider world, an impact interesting and strong enough to be still felt a century later.
PS and maybe we need to read books like this to remember that the 'audacities of one age become the platitudes of the next'.
Bell brings a clear and lucid eye to his recounting of Bloomsbury's development and its members' interactions with each other and society at large. This short study is an interesting education on how a small group can make a significant impact on the wider world, an impact interesting and strong enough to be still felt a century later.
PS and maybe we need to read books like this to remember that the 'audacities of one age become the platitudes of the next'.
February 1, 2022
Books about books, and art, tend to be wonderful. This is pretty good. The only reason it’s not 5* is that it spends too long explaining disagreements which time has made irrelevant.
January 15, 2022
Ik hoopte dat ik een uiteenzetting zou aantreffen over de geschiedenis van de Bloomsbury Group, geschreven door een eersterangs toeschouwer. Wat ik las was echter een wollige uiteenzetting over ideeën van enkele leden van het gezelschap, grotendeels afgewisseld met passages over de Engelse kijk op de Eerste Wereldoorlog, D.H. Lawrence en de betekenis van fatsoen. Misschien interessant voor een doorgewinterde Bloomsbury-deskundige, maar niet voor de leek weggelegd.
April 3, 2013
Short, interesting, but rambles a bit - a series of essays rather than a coherent whole. Worth looking at just for the photographs if you are at all interested in the Bloomsbury Group. Occasional gems, such as:
'...the nineteen-twenties made it and broke it; it was then that it soared, burst in lazy scintillating splendour and slowly expired in still glowing fragments.'
'...the nineteen-twenties made it and broke it; it was then that it soared, burst in lazy scintillating splendour and slowly expired in still glowing fragments.'
November 25, 2013
An interesting and intimate portrait of the members of the Bloomsbury group. It mainly focuses on the period up to and just after WWI. Some interesting insights by a person who had a personal connection with it's members. One for Bloomsbury enthusiasts.
November 10, 2017
A restrained insider view of the group - interesting though.
February 6, 2025
As a one-time specialist in English Literature as a bookseller, I have always been aware of the Bloomsbury Group and many of its artistic and literary members. But I had never studied it in any great details. And while Quentin Bell, as well placed as any with his parents being heavily involved, has produced an account of its creation and development, he concentrates more on the issues that the group faced and reactions to the members rather than concentrate on any biographical detail of those members. There is nothing wrong with that but I would have liked to learn a little more about them.
Of course Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and others flip in and out of the history, with varying degrees of interesting reaction to their views from outsiders. Those outsiders included DH Lawrence who in later times had no time whatsoever for the group and forcibly said so!
The group was born, as it were, in Cambridge at Trinity College at the beginning of the 20th century when student friendship and student societies, the 'Apostles' in particular, brought most of the men in the group together. In 1904, after the death of one of the main members, Sir Leslie Stephen, in 1904 the Cambridge element united with a London element and it was 1910 when the group rose to true prominence. That was the year that the group were instrumental in organising, mainly through one of its members Roger Fry, the First Post-Impressionist Exhibition that was held at the Grafton Galleries. And Quentin Bell demonstrates its importance when he writes, 'If we omit EM Forster and Roger Fry it is true to say that up to the year 1910 Bloomsbury had produced very little apart from conversation, very little that is that could be shown to the world.' The exhibition was so successful that a second similar exhibition followed in 1912.
The First World War brought some dissention in the ranks, particularly over the issue of conscientious objectors and it was during this period that Lawrence weighed in with his views of the group fuelled by his dislike for Francis Birrell. And some of Fry's views brought a telling comment from Sir William Richmond who felt that some of his comments were 'unpardonable', adding, 'Mr Fry must not be surprised if he is boycotted by decent society.'
The 1920s brought a number of significant publications by members of the group but the deaths of Lytton Strachey in 1931 and Roger Fry in 1934 seemed to change the character of the group. And eventually the advent of Fascism coupled with the views of the Bloomsbury group proved fatal and ultimately as Quentin Bell writes in ending his short history, 'the group as a group ceased to exist'.
I should just mention the excellent selection of illustrations, many not previously published, and overall the book is a useful introduction to the Bloomsbury fraternity but a more in-depth history would undoubtedly fill in many of the gaps and explain more about the individual members.
Of course Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and others flip in and out of the history, with varying degrees of interesting reaction to their views from outsiders. Those outsiders included DH Lawrence who in later times had no time whatsoever for the group and forcibly said so!
The group was born, as it were, in Cambridge at Trinity College at the beginning of the 20th century when student friendship and student societies, the 'Apostles' in particular, brought most of the men in the group together. In 1904, after the death of one of the main members, Sir Leslie Stephen, in 1904 the Cambridge element united with a London element and it was 1910 when the group rose to true prominence. That was the year that the group were instrumental in organising, mainly through one of its members Roger Fry, the First Post-Impressionist Exhibition that was held at the Grafton Galleries. And Quentin Bell demonstrates its importance when he writes, 'If we omit EM Forster and Roger Fry it is true to say that up to the year 1910 Bloomsbury had produced very little apart from conversation, very little that is that could be shown to the world.' The exhibition was so successful that a second similar exhibition followed in 1912.
The First World War brought some dissention in the ranks, particularly over the issue of conscientious objectors and it was during this period that Lawrence weighed in with his views of the group fuelled by his dislike for Francis Birrell. And some of Fry's views brought a telling comment from Sir William Richmond who felt that some of his comments were 'unpardonable', adding, 'Mr Fry must not be surprised if he is boycotted by decent society.'
The 1920s brought a number of significant publications by members of the group but the deaths of Lytton Strachey in 1931 and Roger Fry in 1934 seemed to change the character of the group. And eventually the advent of Fascism coupled with the views of the Bloomsbury group proved fatal and ultimately as Quentin Bell writes in ending his short history, 'the group as a group ceased to exist'.
I should just mention the excellent selection of illustrations, many not previously published, and overall the book is a useful introduction to the Bloomsbury fraternity but a more in-depth history would undoubtedly fill in many of the gaps and explain more about the individual members.
December 18, 2024
Sorry for laughing out loud when you said Orlando was written for "a friend", Quentin. For 1968 this holds up remarkably well overall, but sometimes... Anyway, that part where you psycho-analysed D.H. Lawrence's dreams to conclude that he didn't get along with your parents' friends because they were too gay and too HOT to handle for Lawrence and his secret homo-erotic insect kink??? That shit's FIRE 👌👌
I've read snippets of Quentin Bell's writing before in other works on Virginia/Bloomsbury, but I didn't realize until now how insightful and loving his writing actually is. I was especially not prepared for a reflection on Bloomsbury to provide me with so many thought-provoking insights on how groups of artists/"intellectuals" can respond to war and to established cultural norms. So far my interest in Bloomsbury has mainly been in their interpersonal relationships, rather than in the (I thought) dry British politics and philosophies from the Cambridge men like Leonard and Clive. To my suprise, this book instead gave me a much deeper and more fundamental understanding not just of the vibe and character of Bloomsbury, but also of their ethics and that more philosophical and political aspect of their cultural significance. I reeally was not expecting to (in the middle of our current metamodern and, horrifically, genocidal and fascistic cultural pendulum swing) get thought-provoking takes on the value of reason over emotion and irony over conviction, or on how (not) to intellectually face the reality of violence... from a book about some posh British people!
I've read snippets of Quentin Bell's writing before in other works on Virginia/Bloomsbury, but I didn't realize until now how insightful and loving his writing actually is. I was especially not prepared for a reflection on Bloomsbury to provide me with so many thought-provoking insights on how groups of artists/"intellectuals" can respond to war and to established cultural norms. So far my interest in Bloomsbury has mainly been in their interpersonal relationships, rather than in the (I thought) dry British politics and philosophies from the Cambridge men like Leonard and Clive. To my suprise, this book instead gave me a much deeper and more fundamental understanding not just of the vibe and character of Bloomsbury, but also of their ethics and that more philosophical and political aspect of their cultural significance. I reeally was not expecting to (in the middle of our current metamodern and, horrifically, genocidal and fascistic cultural pendulum swing) get thought-provoking takes on the value of reason over emotion and irony over conviction, or on how (not) to intellectually face the reality of violence... from a book about some posh British people!
February 7, 2019
A strange and dated but intriguing book.
My short blog on the book, emphasising one quote that hut me:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
My short blog on the book, emphasising one quote that hut me:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
April 3, 2019
Blimey... that was an effort. Lucky it was short - and it does have lovely photos.
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February 8, 2025a fun addition to my bloomsbury collection, an affectionate defense of the group.
February 21, 2024
Es un libro que cumple con lo que se espera. Da trazos de lo que fue el grupo de Bloomsbury, con sus características y ciertos datos que son útiles para comprenderlo en su contexto. Aunque siento que es incompleto, es una buena obra para realizar una aproximación.
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March 9, 2018This tale of the lives of the Bloomsbury group is not as detailed as I hoped it would be. But, Quentin Bell did say in the beginning that he would most likely be biased in what he revealed. It's an okay read. Loved the photographs and the reproductions of the wood cuttings.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews