Ottoline: The Life of Lady Ottoline Morrell

by Sandra Jobson Darroch

Subject: Morrell, Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, Lady, 1873-1938. Biography of one of the most flamboyant women of the Bloomsbury era. Her patronage was influential in artistic & intellectual circles, where she befriended writers such as Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T.S. Eliot & D.H. Lawrence

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History

317 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[P.J. Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like historical gossip, you will love this book! Lady Ottoline Morrell was a kind of spiritual den mother to some interesting characters. Being married to a Member of Parliament was insufficient to satisfy her hunger for intellectual and emotional stimulation. Her salons in London, and later at her estate near Oxford, attracted a potpourri of outrageous people, ranging from politicians like Prime Minister Asquith, Winston Churchill, and Ramsay MacDonald to Bohemian artists like Augustus John. Her friends and guests included D. H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, John Singer Sargent, E. M. Forster, Nijinsky and Diaghilev, John Maynard Keynes, Arnold Bennett, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, even Charley Chaplin.

Biographer Lytton Strachey was a regular, as were Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and many others. Just about anybody who was anybody in the arts was invited to drop by on Thursdays for tea. She knew them all. She had affairs with some, made matches for some, and showed up in the novels of a few. It makes for a fascinating read. Especially recommended to fans of the Bloomsbury crowd.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable biography and a great background piece for anyone who is interested in the Bloomsbury group and has sighed over photos of summer days at Garsington.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Michael Holroyd said, "No one interested in the Bloomsbury Group and in the first thirty years of British arts and letters should miss it." Fascinating portrayal of a fascinating woman.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to tell the difference between this biography and the Seymour biography...this one is somewhat more surface and some guessing and gossip. It was the first full biography and has many wonderful photos. It is a sympathetic portrait of an amazing, eccentric, energetic, legendary, bizarre, and sensitive woman who was the target of feuds and betrayals and much mocking by people she thought were her friends but she never gave up and she continued to help those in British arts and letters.