Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939

by Virginia Nicholson

They ate garlic and didn't always bathe; they listened to Wagner and worshiped Diaghilev; they sent their children to coeducational schools, explored homosexuality and free love, vegetarianism and Post-impressionism. They were often drunk and broke, sometimes hungry, but they were of a rebellious spirit. Inhabiting the same England with Philistines and Puritans, this parallel minority of moral pioneers lived in a world of faulty fireplaces, bounced checks, blocked drains, whooping cough, and incontinent cats.

They were the bohemians.

Virginia Nicholson -- the granddaughter of painter Vanessa Bell and the great-niece of Virginia Woolf -- explores the subversive, eccentric, and flamboyant artistic community of the early twentieth century in this "wonderfully researched and colorful composite portrait of an enigmatic world whose members, because they lived by no rules, are difficult to characterize" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Art, Cultural, British Literature, Sociology

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2002

About the author

VIRGINIA NICHOLSON was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1955. Her father was the art historian and writer Quentin Bell, acclaimed for his biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf. Her mother Anne Olivier Bell edited the five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s Diaries.

Virginia grew up in the suburbs of Leeds, but the family moved to Sussex when she was in her teens. She was educated at Lewes Priory School (Comprehensive). After a gap year working in Paris she went on to study English Literature at King’s College Cambridge.

In 1978 Virginia spent a year living in Italy (Venice), where she taught English and learnt Italian. Returning to the UK in 1979 she re-visited her northern childhood while working for Yorkshire Television as a researcher for children’s programmes. In 1983 she joined the Documentary department of BBC Television.

In 1988 Virginia married screenwriter and author William Nicholson. Following the birth of their son in 1989, Virginia left the BBC and shortly afterwards the Nicholsons moved to East Sussex. Two daughters were born in 1991 and 1993.

Living in Sussex, Virginia became increasingly involved with the Trust that administered Charleston, home of her grandmother the painter Vanessa Bell, in due course becoming its Deputy Chairman. Her first book (co-authored with her father) CHARLESTON: A Bloomsbury House and Garden was published by Frances Lincoln in 1997. In 1999/2000 she made a ten-city tour of the USA to promote the book and Charleston itself.

In November 2002 Viking published AMONG THE BOHEMIANS - Experiments in Living 1900-1939 to critical acclaim. Its publication by Morrow, USA in February 2004 was followed by a sell-out lecture and publicity tour round five American cities.

SINGLED OUT - How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War, was published in August 2007. In this latest book Virginia Nicholson has set out to tell the stories of a remarkable generation of women forced by a historic tragedy to reinvent their lives. Singled Out received a spate of enthusiastic reviews which applauded it as a pioneering and humane work of social history. The work on this book was combined with her continuing commitment to the Charleston Trust.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Picked this up off the shelf, the presence of a bookmark suggested to me that a prior reader (tentatively identified as my mother) had abandoned this book at page 22, by page 25 I could see why. A few pages on, the author tracks down Kathleen Hale in the basement of an old people's home in Bristol "Though rather deaf, she was vigorous & somewhat formidable. Her springy iron-grey hair was cropped short, & she wore a blue caftan top with a silver necklace. She talked about the past, but also the present, & her relationships with the other 'greyheads' in the home, who to her surprise had turned out to be fascinating individuals. Halfway through our interview she mischievously produced an illicit bottle of gin which we drank from plastic cups. Encouraged, I said I thought that despite the extreme hardships of her early life, I was under the impression that she had enjoyed it" (p.30) no doubt I'm soft in the head but gin grannies do enliven a text for me. So I continued. The next chapter about the sexual relations of the Bohemians was however mostly even more tedious than the first 29 pages. It reminded me very much of The Children's book except without the better bits. A catalogue of menages a trois and menages a quatre, mingling gender and class and race I found as entertaining as any catalogue, soon I thought,'what no menage a cinq, or huit, how bourgeois'.

Anyway after about sixty or seventy pages I found it mildly entertaining, then the last fifty or so pages less so. If in truth the quality of the book went up or down or those of the reader I can not say.

But here I am three paragraphs in and I've said nothing about the book, perhaps you are wandering if it is a volume about the Czech community in Britain or some such?

So these Bohemians were British people inspired by the fantasy of being poor and French and working on a masterpiece of some kind in a garret, glugging red wine from the bottle and when one had money, living with extravagance and colour. Nicholson considers that these people were important in breaking up the fustiness, xenophobia and general narrow mindedness of Victorian England, she cites Mrs Beaton (of the cookbook fame) as saying that garlic and fresh vegetables were to be avoided I now picture her in the greengrocers "What do you call these carrots! They are a disgrace, nowhere near as limp and floppy as I want! And this spinach I can still smell it and it is barely yellow!, so she discuses in her book the activities of a smallish group of mostly middle and upper class Arty people in rebellion against the society they grew up in. And the extent to which they standout as interesting or remarkable depends very much on your picture of Victorian Britain.

It is not a group biography, the Bloomsbury set, Augustus John, Dylan Thomas, Peter Warlock and others I'm even less familiar with do crop up but as examples. The book is divided into chapters, each of which takes up a number of questions, for example, Chapter six "Feast and famine" goes: Must one eat English food? - Are table manners important? - Must one eat meat?- What are the alternatives if one can't cook? - Are creativity and cookery compatible? - Where do Bohemians dine out? - Is it possible to eat on an artist's income? - Why must women prepare meals? It's a clever enough way to loosely structure a very disparate book, it does mean that you are always moving backwards and forwards in time and from one person to another.

The impression of the earlier chapters was strikingly miserable many of these artistic types seem to have ended up putting their heads in their own gas ovens, so much so,that Sylvia Plath looked like the last of an unpleasant trend rather than a unique occurrence. And Eric Gill's incest with his three daughters cast a shadow over the text for me - his wife apparently still idolised him as a great Artist.

I spent some time wondering about the ideal reader of this book and my thoughts turned again to Byatt's The Children's book - if you found that interesting and would like a non-fiction version of it with less politics then this is the book for you. Or if you fancy reading about Katherine Mansfield's tears as she tried to clear up after a mutton feast with no hot water and no soap powder, or indeed about Dylan Thomas twice managing to charge drinks and food to Augustus John's account.

Otherwise I felt it was a bit on the margins, it touches on the edges of various artistic movements in England like modernism but doesn't discusses them directly, it touches on the edges of different groupings like the Bloomsbury group but again doesn't confront them, it is a bee of a book passing from flower to flower indiscriminately. I think you could use it for Biblomancy - flicking to a random page and paragraph for advice or amusement: become vegetarian! Laugh at rich people unable to cope without servants!

Your standard love triangle was a bit dull, the Bohemians preferred to liven it up a little, for example the painter Carrington was in love with [author Lytton Strachey] he though was only sexually interested in her husband, while her husband, perversely ,was only sexually interested in his own wife, who was obliged to lower herself to him occasionally to prevent him from wandering off and so breaking Strachey's heart. Eventually Strachley died, so after a week or so Carrington killed herself. I think their love web was actually more complex than that, I probably have forgotten some of the passing players, but on the whole until it ended they all seem to have been happy enough.

I would have like to have seen more Rebecca West, but I guess despite her affair with H.G. Wells maybe she wasn't Bohemian enough? And Edith Nesbit features only once - wearing trousers in order to use a bicycle, the horror of it! Though I hasten to assure you there is no such female trouser wearing in The Railway Children, nor even in The enchanted Castle. Curiously about this time there were actual bands of Romney gypsies crossing the channel and entering England and turning up in Sherlock Holmes (The Speckled Band I think) and E. Nesbit stories.

Naturally if the Bohemians were in revolt against their Fathers, some of their children revolted against Bohemianism, one of Augustus John's sons (one of either nine or ninety-nine children depending on who you trust to have counted all of them) screwed up all his courage to ask permission to become a Royal Navy cadet, and eventually with some disapproval he was allowed.

I don't find it in me to push this book with both hands on to any one, though perhaps if your interests run to that era it may more than tickle your funny bone.

[Sigrid Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is nothing new under the sun.

Let me just repeat that:

There is nothing new under the sun. Your generation, whatever generation you may be, did not invent sex, drugs, nor rock-'n'-roll. Your generation didn't invent pornography, nor polyamory, nor dining without paying the check. Your generation did not invent living honestly, or following your heart, or being oppressed by your parents.

One of the foremost joys I get from reading history is that peoplpe are always, always people. This, I think, is what is truly meant by the chestnut that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. If the hippies knew how the lives of the bohemians came out, would they have still lived the lives they did? If the grunge kids had paid attention to the beats, would they have made different choices? Likely not, actually. But the outcomes of all those movements is bloody obvious to those of us who have read history.

Bohemia began, lived, and died, as all the rest did. In response to social pressures it was born. It lived brilliantly and squalidly, life of the mind exalted and life of the body mortified. Some people thrived and others wilted into death. Bohemia died when it caught on, when it became trendy, and when the Great War caught everyone's attention. In the middle some great works of art, music, and literature were made. Some of the works, and the names attached to them, are even remembered today.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting rather than riveting. This book about British bohemia in the first half of the 20th century is divided into sections – the choice of hardship over material comforts, the push for sexual freedom, new approaches to child rearing, rebellion through dress, revolutionising eating habits, changing the nature of domesticity. The book is largely made up of anecdotes, snapshots of the lives of many artists and writers, most of whom not so well known. It’s the kind of book that helps inform you who you would like to read about in more detail – in my case, Augustus John and Dylan Thomas. The research that must have gone into it is very impressive and it’s well written. However I’m not sure I learned much that isn’t essentially common knowledge. I actually bought this on a misapprehension that it was about Vanessa Bell and how her house Charleston was managed. Teach me to read the blurb of a book more closely before hitting the buy now button.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work by Virginia Nicholson covers the period from 1900 to 1939. This is a sort of history of The Bohemian sensibility in Britain. Nicholson has some antecedents in this area being the daughter of Quentin Bell, granddaughter of Vanessa Bell and great niece of Virginia Woolf.
This is arranged in a thematic way so there are chapters on money and poverty, love and sex, children, clothes, design furniture and interiors, food, housework, travel and being nomadic and friendships. There are an awful lot of people to reference and Nicholson also provides a brief potted biography of most of the major players in the book in an appendix (this was the most useful part of the book).
Some reviewers have noted that the approach used is a bit like the Laundry list method of history and it does drag a little at times. There’s an awful lot about Augustus John’s love life and eccentricities and Nicholson has a distinctive style:
"not just painters and poets, but... vegetarian nature-lovers living in caravans, poseurs in velvet jackets drinking absinthe in the Café Royal, earnest lesbians in men's suits and monocles, kohl-eyed beauties in chiffon and emeralds".
The approach to facts is rather scattergun, but there are lots of interesting snippets. I think what I trying to say is that it doesn’t read very well and can become rather tedious.

[Dfordoom · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Among the Bohemians Virginia Nicholson focuses not on the art produced by the English bohemian sub-culture of the period from 1900 to 1939, but on the way these people lived. Not so much their love affairs, although she certainly deals with such things, but the nitty-gritty of their daily lives, the struggle to feed themselves, to raise their children, to maintain their unconventional households often in the face of horrifying poverty and near-starvation. These were people who paid a heavy price for turning their backs on conventional society, but despite their sufferings most felt that the price was worthwhile. Some had private means and were able to live in moderate comfort, while for others the struggle for existence was desperate indeed.

She tells us about the lives not just of those who eventually achieved fame and success, but also of those whose strivings to achieve artistic recognition ultimately failed. There’s also a strong emphasis on the lives of the bohemian women, and what fascinating women they were! Women like Carrington, and Nina Hamnett, and Betty May, many now just footnotes in the history of art but truly extraordinary women. Artistic success was elusive for women, but for those who had children it was almost impossible, particularly when (as was usually the case) their men were completely indifferent to the destruction of their hopes by the twin burdens of housework and child-rearing. Nicholson (the grand-daughter of Vanessa Bell) approaches her subject thematically rather than chronologically, with chapters on food, parties, sex, the cult of the gypsy, the lure of exotic (and cheap) foreign places, and child-raising. You really couldn’t write a dull book about people such as these, and Virginia Nicholson’s book, is anything but dull. A must for anyone with an interest in social or cultural history, or a fascination for sub-cultures and outsiders. Highly entertaining.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm wavering between two and three stars. This was not what I expected, but really it's my mistake since Virginia Nicholson is upfront about the fact that she is primarily interested in social history on a micro level: What did the bohemians eat for lunch? What sort of clothes did they wear? How did they decorate their apartments? How did they take baths? Did they go on trips and if so, how did they travel? She organizes the book thematically, rather than chronologically, so that you don't get good sense of who did what, and when. If you are looking for an account of the major personalities or artistic accomplishments of the time, this is probably not the book you are looking for. The book covers a large time period -- 1900 through 1939 -- and other than asides about Victorians or Edwardians, there is really no sense of a time period. World War I is almost entirely glossed over, except to point out how the bohemians partied for days after the armistice. But this left me with even more questions: Why weren't the men required to enlist? Were they all conscientious objectors? Did they all know each other before or was this crazy party the first time they met? And, for example, the chapter on child-rearing: She briefly describes childhood for the Victorian or Edwardian child and then skips ahead to the public schools of the 1920s and 30s, interspersing some of the interesting educational schemes of the Bohemians. Personalities are randomly brought in and out to make a point, rather than provide a narrative. She mentions a few frequently -- Vanessa Bell (she is the author's grandmother), Augustus John and his long suffering wives/companions, Ida and then Dorelia, Carrington, Mark Gerstler, Lytton Strachey, Robert Graves, and a few others. There are a ton of people mentioned, some only once or twice, and almost always without context other than "This person, too, wore a beard!" or something along those lines.


This all sounds very negative, but I did find it interesting and learned a lot of Victorian/Edwardian era trivia. It's interesting to note that, for the most part, women ended up getting a raw deal. Though bohemianism could be liberating, especially for some upper-class women, most ended up sacrificing their art and careers once they were married. Though bohemians were more lax on housekeeping, the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing still had to be done and traditional gender roles were still strongly enforced. Even the artistic clubs with the enlightened bohemian men banned women from becoming members. And while both men and women were frowned upon for bending the rules, it seems like the consequences were much harsher for women. I can't think of any examples at the moment to back that up, but it seems true. Also, I have a suspicion that some people maybe used the idea of bohemianism as an excuse to act like jerks, and if called out, would say something like "I CAST OFF THE BONDS OF SOCIETY. MY ART IS WHAT MATTERS. Not this beleaguered woman I've impregnated for the fifth time, or my starving feral children, or the conventional losers that I scoff at yet sponge off of, or just being a genuinely nice person because BAH. SOCIETY." Which MAY be true, based on some of the anecdotes in this book. And that's my major issue, I think -- as much as the author wants us to give props to the bohemians for breaking down class barriers, giving women independence, promoting tolerance for other cultures (namely, gypsies), it's a bit of a tough sell. I don't doubt that it contributed and certain people were probably more helpful in others, but eating garlicky foods and refusing to wear white tie to dinner does not mean that the bohemians were more enlightened or less classist or racist than their conventional counterparts.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books which tell history in a thematic context, rather than chronologically, can have been well researched and contain snippets of fascinating information, but still be incoherent and jumbled. Virginia Nicholson has done her research, selected her information and arranged it logically around the different strands of her theme of the experimental bohemian lifestyle. She has created a coherent, co-ordinated narrative and written it well.
Her central theme is that the artists, writers, poets, etc. who inhabited 'Bohemia' were trying to find new ways of living, loving and raising their children. They were taking part in a social experiment or making a lifestyle choice. Sometimes the experiments were disastrous, sometimes the choices were very limited and sometimes the bohemians were a lot more sure about what they were rejecting than what they wanted to put in its place. Virginia Nicholson puts their case and hers compellingly but not blindly.
Many of the artistic embracers of 'La Vie Boheme' came from traditional Victorian middle class backgrounds and could be seen as self-indulgent and unrealistic: poverty was not romantic for the many millions suffering from the low wages and unemployment of the depression. The artists however went hungry and suffered the diseases of poverty in the same way as those who had never been given a choice, they really did suffer for their art.
If respectability is not a consideration what advantage is there to a woman in getting married? The mistresses did not seem to fare much better however. (The main advantages of marriage for a man seem to be that he gets his brushes and clothes washed and has a better idea which children are his.)
Children can learn through play and this is certainly better than trying to beat knowledge into them, but there is a fine line between giving children freedom and neglecting them which some of the bohemian parents crossed.
I found the chapters on interior design, clothing, dining and entertaining less interesting, but all the chapters go together to give an overall picture of these people and their lives, which was fascinating. (I will just observe that nobody should have let Dylan Thomas or Duncan Grant anywhere near a kitchen; Ford Madox Ford, on the other hand, would be welcome to visit mine anytime.)

[Malin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed reading this book - but perhaps my interest was fuelled partly by the fact that my husbands mother was mentioned several times in it. I liked the way it was written, it feels like there has been massive research behind it. The 1920's were interesting times in many ways, and the insights into how the "bohemians" lived and thought at this time are in some ways similar to the 60's when I grew up. I was spellbound reading it!

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wish that when high school and college teachers of "literature" assign "great works" for their students, they would also assign sections like this book. Any literary movement is going to be reflective of the time and place from which it springs, and without context many works just sort of float in the minds of readers without being moored to anything. In many ways, knowing more about the people who created now-famous works of art, or even those whose talent has not stood the test of time, is to me more interesting than the art itself.

As someone who was born in the mid-1960s, I was struck by how similar these people were to the Hippies that I was more familiar with. Long before the 'swinging 60s', there was "a circle of people who lived in squares and loved in triangles", setting aside the assumptions of their usually middle-class upbringings in a quest to live for art, for truth, and for beauty.

This is a chatty, conversational book - drawn from memoirs, interviews, and lots of gossip. There is a certain assumption that you will be familiar with institutions of British art (like what a 'Slade girl" is) which can be a bit opaque to the American reader. Parts of it go by very fast, and it can be easy to lose track of who was living with whom while having an affair with whomever. Don't try. Just let it all wash by - you can always sort it out later.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

My idea of a great bedside book. One wild anecdote after another, organized by topic rather than chronology, in good clear friendly prose.

I see some reviewers found it dull. It's probably not best to read it all at once, I think the effect would be very choppy, and if you're looking for a reasoned in-depth discussion or a more traditional history book, you will be disappointed. I would dip in and read a few pages before sleep, finding one great story after another.

It's true, there is nothing new under the sun in experimental rebellious living. And it was all much more of a bold leap in the 1920s and 30s when mainstream society was so deeply traditional and conservative, and there was no social safety net or modern medicine to rescue the starving artist from disease, addiction, and actual starvation.

Nicholson also shows how it takes an extreme revolution by a brave few to change society in the long run, how what is extreme and shocking behavior for one generation becomes ordinary life for their descendants. Social freedom for women, all our modern array of choices in dress, food, domestic life, relationships... thank the Bohemians.

[Beth (bibliobeth) · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the style the author adopts. Rather than sequencing events chronologically, she decides to split it into various sections i.e. love, food, money, education. Before she begins the section she will ask a number of questions which she then proceeds to answer in the chapter. I found this a very effective way of organizing and presenting the information, and it made it more interesting as a reader. A lot of the Bohemian ideals were a sort of escapism and breaking free against the previous Victorian infringements on society. And the Victorians were incredibly “proper” about things, especially regarding what women should and shouldn’t do. No unmarried woman was to go anywhere without a chaperone, no drinking, no smoking, and the clothes! From the layers upon layers of underclothes and petticoats, it was no wonder that in some marriages, the couple had never seen each other naked!

Please see my full review at http://www.bibliobeth.wordpress.com

[Merilee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've just begun this on my Kindle, written by Vanessa Bell's (Virginia Woolf's sister) grand-daughter. Nicholson is her married name and does not seem to come from the Harold Nicholsons, which would have made things really interesting!

Not as interesting as it sounds. It kind of drones on and on about the somewhat obvious differences between the Bohemians and their Victorian predecessors. One of the few things that surprised me was that the Victorians found blue dinner plates absolutely horrifying. I wish I could find a version of the appendix to print because it has a cast of characters (real) with a paragraph about each. There were so many marriages and menages-a-trois and even -quatres, that this would help one keep track. Despite all this scandalous behavior, it was very ho-hum. Oh, Augustus John had tons and tons of love-children...

[Jerome Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always wanted to read a book like this with wells of history about experiments in living. Walden Two by B.F Skinner is another great read; though it is a tab more modern. I do believe bohemianism started a vast free thinking movement that overlapped into the beatniks and of course the hippie generation. The book was well written with drops of wit and humor. I enjoyed the parts about how they raised their children, what the ate, and how they chose to live. I highly recommend this to anyone who is not interested in living within the boundaries of what is popular and what is not. There is no question in my mind whether or not I would have been a bohemian. Is there such a thing as a mid-western bohemian?

[Sara Giacalone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read about the nitty gritty details about bohemian life and how groundbreaking it was. Makes the 1960s look like a bunch of rehashed poseurs.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's totally fascinating and I love it! It's insightful and enjoyably written, about those artists and hang-arounds and wannabes that you could find in London (mostly) in the first four decades of the 20th century. The author has also quite an insight in matters from her own family background - being the daughter of Quentin Bell, the son of Vanessa Bell - and though not an academic she treats the subject very well.

The book is written with chapters on different themes, a choice made by the author as she (as she states herself) thought that would work better than having a chronological description of these people. Since the book is more about a style of life than aiming to be a biography of all the people who lived it, I think she made a right decision. Still, I think it would have helped with ONE chapter on the historical development - it's 40 years of history, from the Edwardian era up to the Second world war, passing through the Great war and the roaring twenties. A lot of stuff happened in that time and it would have been interesting to see if the bohemians continued to differentiate from 'ordinary' people in the same ways, or if there was a change. And I wouldn't have minded a little bit more on the subjects of religion and politics (which could be quite interesting, I think).


(I even enjoyed reading her Notes on sources - which is quite a feat!)

[Charles Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is not an endorsement of amazon.com or any business owned by Jeff Bezos. Books for my reviews were checked out from a public library, purchased from a local brick-and-mortar book shop, or ordered from my favorite website for rare and out-of-print books.

The movie Carrington, starring Emma Thompson as the artist Dora Carrington, got me interested in looking at the Bohemians. The author, Virginia Nicholson, is daughter of the Bohemian painter Vanessa Bell as well as a niece of Virginia Woolf. Nicholson has not attempted a memoir of her upbringing; rather she surveys all aspects of the lifestyle that made the Bohemians countercultural to the Victorian norms: simple living, free love, child-rearing practices, etc. The book is well-written with a brisk narrative. A survey of Brit Bohemians, it has helpful appendices for those, like me, who are inclined to read the memoirs of some of these figures. I already exhausted material on Rupert Brooke last year; Nicholson references a dozen other figures I might want to research.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huh, how oddly fascinating this book was. Who knew I was so intensely interested in the daily minutiae of early twentieth century English Bohemian life. Like, where did they live and what did they eat and what did they think about the education of their children and what did they wear and how did they work...even in describing this, I'm thinking I'm not making it seem very interesting...

The author does a far better job than I do making it sound interesting--because as another reviewer pointed out, she manages to make the lives here sound terribly terribly romantic, and I'm convinced I would have been blissfully happy as an impoverished early bohemian affecting a gypsy lifestyle with my bearded husband and our brood of wild barefoot children.

[Nigeyb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, so I didn't read the entire book, in fact I spent three hours dipping into each of the chapters having read the first two chapters in their entirety. Ultimately I was disappointed. The book has a few great anecdotes however my attention frequently wandered and few stories seemed particularly surprising. The author consciously draws on a wide range of different people to populate the chapters, that are each arranged under subject headings, so that I found it hard to get engaged. I wonder if focussing on a person, or group, might have made similar points but in a more readable and compelling way. I am inspired to find out more about Nina Hamnett and Eric Gill however ultimately the extensive cast of characters who appear in the book overwhelmed me.

[Sarah Harkness · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book a higher rating, as it's just the sort of book I do like; and I love some, if not all, of the protagonists. But I just found it really hard to read - there was simply too much material, and although I think the author had tried to sort it out, it just became a bit repetitive and confusing. Too many people doing and saying similarly shocking or silly things. And some of these people clearly had no literary or artistic merit, they were just stupidly rich or alcoholic hangers on. So it took me nearly two years to summon the energy to finish it. Maybe it should only be for dipping in to? I really enjoyed Singled Out, the next book Nicholson . Less is more?

[Rochelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book about the hard living, hard scrabble life of artists/writers/models/hangers-on in the first four decades of the 20th century. Some were recognizable, such as Vanessa Bell, but others have been lost in the fogs of obscurity. It was interesting to learn that some of the education theories we have stem from this time and from the works of Rousseau. Reading this book inspired me to re read "Of Human Bondage" which now has me in its grip! Maugham is one of my all time favorite writers and Bondage is one of his greatest.

Once I finish "Of Human Bondage" I will start on "Vile Bodies" by Waugh, which the author also mentioned.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an incredible amount of detail about life in Bohemian England. Nicholson does a great job of helping the reader look beyond the stereotypes of Bohemian life. At times the book is sort of "gossipy," but it's always interesting. It makes me want to go back and read some of the writers of the period, now that I know more about the Bohemian culture. This is essential reading for anyone interested in Britain between the wars.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicholson does an excellent job with this bit of fascinating social history. Rather than trying to organize it chronologically or around any particular person, she uses a thematic approach, which works very well. The book is well researched, and her writing is fluid and colorful, a combination which allows for appreciation of both Nicholson's knowledge of her subject and ability to convey it interestingly.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this a lot. It’s about artists and writers who did radical things like practice free love, live in garrets, and move to the south of France. People were shocked because the men grew beards and the women wore pants. She’s Virginia Woolf’s great-niece so she probably knows what she’s talking about.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Virginia Nicholson dives deep into the lives of bohemian artists in London and Paris from the turn of the century to World War II. I was not familiar with many of the names but that didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book. It sounded like quite the party if you didn't starve, die of cirrhosis, go mad or commit suicide. The artists and writers in this group (no musicians, oddly)lived for the day and spent whatever money they had on the best food and drink before going back to their shabby garret apartments. Typical of the time, female artists didn't have equal footing as they were expected to do the chores and raise the children while the men worked on their latest creations. This helps to explain why most of the famous women of the period were lesbians.

Looking on as a 21st century observer, I wanted to be part of the fun without the harsh realities of being destitute or getting sent to war. But it was the hard times that made the good times even better, as the seemingly never-ending Armistice party indicated. I would have been a bourgeois slumming tourist in their eyes, but they'd welcome anyone who paid for the drinks. I could live with that.

My only quibble with the book is that it is not a linear story. The jumps back and forth in time can be a bit confusing.

[Marguerite Kaye]

DNF.

I got about half-way through with this, and stopped reading thinking I'd go back to it, but I don't want to. I loved the idea, of looking at the 'bohemian' life through lots of different examples, and taking themes such as clothes, housing, child care. But...

The people! I simply could not take to any of them. For Bohemian, I read selfish, thoughtless, dependent on other people digging them out. I couldn't get over the casual way some of them treated their children or relied on friends for hand outs. And frankly, there seemed to be no real common thread running through what 'bohemian' actually meant. Its not really an ethos or a lifestyle, it's - well, as I said, it struck me as being simply selfish. Maybe what it is, is abdicating? The men in particular got on with living life their way because the women ran after them.

Okay, rant over. Sadly disappointed in this. But maybe I'm simply not bohemian enough.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure is true that every age has its devotees of art and freedom, coupled with those who worship corsets and damask curtains. Repression breeds "free" love and art. Long been true.
I liked Nicholson's approach - by thread and question instead of chronology. It allows her to keep "threading" the stories of a variety of people through food, lodging, travel, drink and drugs, fashion, poverty, child rearing, polyamory and weird excursions into religious and artistic ecstasy.
Incredibly well-researched and lively in style and substance.
Thought a lot about privies of the soul and early choices that determine life's flight.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of the world of the Bohemians, written by a granddaughter of Vanessa Bell, one of the central characters in the Bohemian world in the year before the Second World War. I very much liked Nicholson's thematic approach, it gave a far deeper examination than a strictly chronological approach would have done.

I wasn't particularly taken with any of the characters and found some of them to border on the repulsive. Some aspects of the Bohemians approach to life appeal to me, and I agree with Nicholson's view that these people pushed the boundaries and helped to bring about the less restrictive society that I grew up in. But some of the attitudes and beliefs that some of them held just mystify me. Personal cleanliness and keeping a clean living environment for one - as someone who writes, I cannot work in squalor, yet some of these people seemed to be able to, indeed to revel in it.

That does not take away from how much i enjoyed reading this book. I was familiar with some of the persons discussed but a lot of what was mentioned here was very new to me. It is very well written and well paced. I would recommend this to anyone interested in this period, in artists and writers, in those who want to live a different life.

[RC and Moon Pie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While some of it is quite interesting, I found myself most amused with the specific comparisons to Edwardian and Victorian etiquette, which probably wasn't the author's intention. Yes, the lives of Augustus John and his various lovers and children is amusing as are the tales of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas, but I think Nicholson hurt the book with her approach. She has divided Bohemian culture into different sub-topics, such as decorating, dressing, eating, and the fascinatingly bizarre chapter on sex. I'm curious as to what the book would have been like if she had gone more of a chronological order with events. As is, the information just hangs out there, with little except the final chapter about the Jazz Age and beyond to tie it to other events in history. How was Bohemian culture affected by the death of Edward VII? The events of World War I? There are some good things in this book, but I wish they had been presented differently.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am mixed on this book, there was a lot of history in this book, I learned a lot and it is a very approachable book in it's style, but quite often I had a hard time getting past the apologist nature of her writing about the group of people who made up "Bohemia", everything was honorable and beautiful and well intentioned and dedicated to art...even when it wasn't and no matter what it was, which leads the author to gloss over some pretty despicable behavior including incest and various forms of abusive behavior.

That said I do feel I learned a lot and have a pretty good feel for that lifestyle and period of time and it was well worth reading. The author does get into not just the cutler of Bohemia but the culture of the times that it was rebelling against, which did often put much of their behavior into a much clearer light and allowed me to make my own conclusions about their lives despite the rose colored glasses worn by the author.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great background for all the other books I've been reading over the last two years--my own bohemian (interest) period. Never quite understand why Fitzgerald was always a bit of an outsider? Like Christopher Isherwood or George Orwell? Well maybe you want to know a little more about their lifestyle, and where they were coming from. This book tells all: what they were rebelling against, who they were shacking up with, why they didn't find it necessary to bathe, how they lived without incomes, and all the other tawdry details. Plus, it's interesting in its own right, a feat which the author failed to accomplish in her other book "Singled Out," about all the surplus women after WWI.
Highly educational AND interesting, a good combo. Read it--your 12th grade English teacher would want you to.