Bloomsbury Recalled [Paperback]

Quentin Bell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1997

Bell's extraordinary memoir of the influential Bloomsbury group, a circle of intellectual giants that gathered in London in the early part of this century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of the last surviving members of the Bloomsbury circle, Bell, painter, sculptor and art critic, offers a disarmingly candid portrait gallery of major and peripheral Bloomsbury figures. His father, Clive Bell, married the author's mother, Vanessa Stephen (Virginia Woolf's sister) in 1907 but "from 1916 Clive was hardly part of the family." He pursued love affairs while Vanessa, after a clandestine affair with art critic Roger Fry, lived openly with bisexual painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica. Clive, Duncan and Vanessa were reunited under one roof in 1939, and the author conveys a sense of the emotional strain of growing up in "a multi-parent family." Acclaimed biographer of his aunt, Virginia Woolf, Bell here defends her as a feminist and pacifist. Along with chapters on John Maynard Keynes, Ottoline Morrell and art historian/spy Anthony Blunt, there are glimpses of Lytton Strachey, novelist David Garnett (Angelica's husband) and Dame Ethel Smyth, who fell in love with Virginia Woolf. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Bell is an artist, art critic, academic, and writer whose biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf (LJ 11/1/72), was highly praised. He has now written a collection of anecdotal biographical sketches of the members of Bloomsbury, the group of London artists, writers, and intellectuals who lived and worked together from about 1900 to 1940. His subjects include Vanessa and Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, David Garnett, and a new non-Bloomsbury folk-art historian and reputed spy, Anthony Blunt. Bell does not provide comprehensive biographies but rather personal reflections and memories, some very funny, of people he knew from his childhood. One learns much about these people and about Bell himself. His work is such a pleasure to read that it is recommended to everyone and is essential for British literature collections.?Judy Mimken, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (January 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231105657
• ISBN-13: 978-0231105651
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,175,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointingly thin view of Bloomsbury, June 22, 2003

By 

Alan Ross (Paris, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bloomsbury Recalled (Hardcover)

Despite the fact that the late Quentin Bell was a peripheral part of the Bloomsbury circle don't look for this book to be very informative. The mini-bios Bell lays out for the various members are quite shallow and inchoate for the most part and the occasional sprinklings of anecdotal material do not make up for the lack of substance overall which will hardly fill the apetite of the curious. Generally the book is too ambitious in trying to provide meaningful sketches of the lives of several fascinating historical figures each of whom could fill many volumes of interesting reading alone. Nor is any attempt made by Bell to try to help the reader understand the genesis or the historical significance of the Bloomsbury movement. For a reader unacquainted with Bloomsbury who wants an easy somewhat fluffy read maybe...anyone with a real interest in the movement might want to pass.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Bloomsbury Set, recalled from inside out, August 23, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bloomsbury Recalled (Paperback)

In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell, one of the sons of Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa, recalls those deeply interesting people of the infamous Bloomsbury Set in a collection of anecdotal and biographical sketches. It seems that anybody who was anyone in the world of art, letters, literature, and/or intellectuals appeared at some time within this circle of friends and lovers. This loose and shifting group of people alternately lived, worked, and loved together between 1900-1940, and included Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa and Clive Bell, E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and many other names that are familiar to today's readers. These personal recollections from Quentin Bell's childhood memories are a delight to read and prove enlightening not only with regard to his subjects but also of Bell himself.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Amusing Memoir, March 27, 2000

By 

Simulacrum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bloomsbury Recalled (Hardcover)

The Bloomsbury section of London, which includes the British Museum and University College, is famous in literary circles as the former stomping ground of "the Bloomsbury group," a handful of Cambridge-educated intellectuals, notably Roger Fry (who founded the Omega Workshops), E.M. Forster, Lytton Stratchey, Virginia Woolf, and Woolf's sister, Vanessa, who was married to the critic Clive Bell (remembered for having invented the phrase "significant form"). The author is an artist, writer and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, who was born at Gordon Square in Bloomsbury in 1910. More than 60 years later, he published a two-volume biography of his aunt, titled Virginia Woolf; and now, at age 85, has written an often amusing memoir of her, his parents and other eccentric literary celebrities who resided or commonly visited there. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 11 No 4, Summer 1996)