Bloomsbury group

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Bloomsbury Group. A loose association of writers, artists, and intellectuals that was a distinctive force in British cultural life during the early decades of the 20th century. Leading members of the group included the writers E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, and Virginia Woolf, and the economist John Maynard Keynes (who was also a notable patron); among the artists and critics were Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Henry Lamb. They frequently met at the houses of Clive and Vanessa Bell, or of Vanessa's sister, Virginia Woolf, in the Bloomsbury district of London, which had long been a favourite area for artists, musicians, and writers (the British Museum, the University of London, various learned institutions, and numerous publishers' offices are all in the locality). The original meeting place, from about 1905, was 46 Gordon Square, at that time the home of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen (as they were before their marriages).

The association stemmed from student friendships formed at Cambridge University; most of the ‘Bloomsberries’ had been at either King's College or Trinity College and many had been ‘Apostles'—members of an exclusive, semi-secret intellectual club. However, the Bloomsbury Group had no formal membership and no common social or aesthetic ideology. The members were united mainly by their belief in the importance of the arts and—in revolt against the restrictions of Victorian society—by their frankness and tolerance in sexual matters (several of them were homosexual or bisexual and their love lives were often complexly intertwined). A key book for them was Principia Ethica (1903) by the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore, in which it is argued that ‘By far the most valuable things … are … the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects … it is they that form the rational ultimate end of social progress'.

In the visual arts, the Bloomsbury Group made its most significant impact in the 1910s, after it had been joined by Roger Fry (he had lived in New York from 1906 to 1910). Fry was highly influential in promoting an awareness of modern art—through his writing and lecturing, through his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions (1910 and 1912), and through his founding of the Omega Workshops (1913). It was at this time, too, that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were at their most adventurous, both of them producing pure abstracts by 1914. From the 1920s the members of the group were no longer in the forefront of ideas, but Duncan Grant was at this time at the peak of his popularity. The richly coloured figurative style in which he and Vanessa Bell worked in the period between the two world wars is considered the ‘typical’ Bloomsbury style. By the early 1930s the Bloomsbury Group had ceased to exist in its original form; the death of Lytton Strachey in 1932 is sometimes taken as a convenient terminus, although it was perhaps the suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941 that really marked the end of an era. After the Second World War, Bloomsbury ideas fell out of fashion and the members of the group were attacked as dilettantist and elitist. However, from the late 1960s there has been a great revival of interest in all aspects of the group, marked by the publication of numerous biographical and critical studies.

Bloomsbury Group. A loose association of writers, artists, and intellectuals that was a distinctive force in British cultural life during the early decades of the 20th century. Leading members of the group included the writers E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, and Virginia Woolf, and the economist John Maynard Keynes; among the artists and critics were Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington (1893–1932), Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Henry Lamb. The group takes its name from the Bloomsbury district of London, where members often met at the houses of Clive and Vanessa Bell or of Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, and it stemmed from student friendships formed at Cambridge University; most of the ‘Bloomsberries’ had been at either King's College or Trinity College and many had been ‘Apostles’—members of an exclusive, semi-secret intellectual club. However, the Bloomsbury Group had no formal membership and no common social or aesthetic ideology. The members were united mainly by their belief in the importance of the arts and—in revolt against the restrictions of Victorian society—by their frankness and tolerance in sexual matters (several of them were homosexual or bisexual and their love lives were often complexly intertwined).

In the visual arts, the Bloomsbury Group made its most significant impact in the 1910s, after it had been joined by Roger Fry (he had lived in New York from 1906 to 1910). Fry was highly influential in promoting an awareness of modern art—through his writing and lecturing, through his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions (1910 and 1912), and through his founding of the Omega Workshops (1913). It was at this time, too, that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were at their most adventurous, both of them producing pure abstracts by 1914. However, the richly coloured figurative style in which the couple worked in the period between the two world wars is considered the ‘typical’ Bloomsbury style. By the early 1930s the Bloomsbury Group had ceased to exist in its original form. After the Second World War, its ideas fell out of fashion and its members were attacked as dilettantish and elitist. However, from the late 1960s there has been a great revival of interest in all aspects of the group.

Bloomsbury Group A loose association of writers, artists, and intellectuals that was a distinctive force in British cultural life during the early decades of the 20th century. Leading members of the group included the writers E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, and Virginia Woolf, and the economist John Maynard Keynes; among the artists and critics were Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington (1893–1932), Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Henry Lamb. The group takes its name from the Bloomsbury district of London, where members often met at the houses of Clive and Vanessa Bell, or of Vanessa's sister, Virginia Woolf, and it stemmed from student friendships formed at Cambridge University; most of the ‘Bloomsberries’ had been at either King's College or Trinity College and many had been ‘Apostles’—members of an exclusive, semi-secret intellectual club. However, the Bloomsbury Group had no formal membership and no common social or aesthetic ideology. The members were united mainly by their belief in the importance of the arts and—in revolt against the restrictions of Victorian society—by their frankness and tolerance in sexual matters (several of them were homosexual or bisexual and their love lives were often complexly intertwined).

In the visual arts, the Bloomsbury Group made its most significant impact in the 1910s, after it had been joined by Roger Fry (he had lived in New York from 1906 to 1910). Fry was highly influential in promoting an awareness of modern art—through his writing and lecturing, through his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions (1910 and 1912), and through his founding of the Omega Workshops (1913). It was at this time, too, that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were at their most adventurous, both of them producing pure abstracts by 1914. However, the richly coloured figurative style in which the couple worked in the period between the two world wars is considered the ‘typical’ Bloomsbury style. By the early 1930s the Bloomsbury Group had ceased to exist in its original form. After the Second World War, its ideas fell out of fashion and its members were attacked as dilettantish and elitist. However, from the late 1960s there has been a great revival of interest in all aspects of the group.

Bloomsbury group name given to the literary group that made the Bloomsbury area of London the center of its activities from 1904 to World War II. It included Lytton Strachey , Virginia Woolf , Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster , Vita Sackville-West , Roger Fry , Clive Bell , and John Maynard Keynes . The group began as a social clique: a few recent Cambridge graduates and their closest friends would assemble on Thursday nights for drinks and conversation. Its members were committed to a rejection of what they felt were the strictures and taboos of Victorianism on religious, artistic, social, and sexual matters. They remained a fairly tight-knit group for many years; recent biographers have detailed their tangled personal relations. By the 1920s Bloomsbury's reputation as a cultural circle was fully established to the extent that its mannerisms were parodied and Bloomsbury became a widely used term connoting an insular, snobbish aestheticism. Unique in the brilliance, variety, and output of its members, the group has remained the focus of widespread scholarly and popular interest.

Bibliography: See J. K. Johnstone, The Bloomsbury Group (1954); L. Woolf, Beginning Again (1964); Q. Bell, Bloomsbury (1969) and Bloomsbury Recalled (1996); S. P. Rosenbaum, The Bloomsbury Group (1975); A. Garnett, Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood (1985); L. J. Markert, The Bloomsbury Group: A Reference Guide (1990).

Bloomsbury Group, the name given to a group of friends who began to meet about 1905–6; its original centre was 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, which became in 1904 the home of V. Bell and V. Woolf (both then unmarried). It was to include, amongst others, Keynes, Strachey, D. Garnett, D. Grant, E. M. Forster, and R. Fry. This informal association, based on friendship and interest in the arts, derived many of its attitudes from G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Its members, many of whom were in conscious revolt against the artistic, social, and sexual restrictions of Victorian society, profoundly affected the development of the avant-garde in art and literature in Britain. Bloomsbury was attacked by Leavis as dilettante and élitist, and its aims and achievements fell temporarily out of favour, but the late 1960s witnessed a great revival of interest and the publication of many critical and biographical studies (notably Holroyd's two-volume life of Strachey, 1967–8) seeking to re-assess Bloomsbury's influence.

Bloomsbury Group. A circle of artists, writers, and critics meeting in private houses in Bloomsbury, London, who in their revolt against the artistic, social, and sexual restrictions of Victorian society were an important influence on cultural and intellectual life in the early decades of the 20th cent. Most had studied at Cambridge, and were influenced by the philosopher G. E. Moore, whose Principia ethica (1903) emphasized the importance of personal relationships and aesthetic experience. Among leading members were Clive and Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, J. Maynard Keynes, and Virginia Woolf.

June Cochrane

Bloomsbury Group Intellectuals who met in Bloomsbury, London, from c.1907. They included the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell; novelists E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf; her husband Leonard Woolf, a publisher; economist John Maynard Keynes, and biographer Lytton Strachey. The group's attitudes were influenced by the empiricist philosopher G. E. Moore, and are encapsulated in his statement: “the rational ultimate end of human progress consists in the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects.”

Bloomsbury Group a group of writers, artists, and philosophers living in or associated with Bloomsbury in the early 20th century. Members of the group, which included Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, were known for their unconventional lifestyles and attitudes and were a powerful force in the growth of modernism.