Customer Reviews

Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf

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I really enjoyed this book. I could pore over the fashions, the interior decoration - it satisfied my desire to see all the details! At the same time, I got a sense of the passage of time in Virginia and Vanessa's lives. Read as a companion to any of Woolf's novels, I think the book would also convey a sense of the writing process.

It evokes the time and place beautifully, and the text is not intrusive: the images are allowed to take centre stage as works of art in their own right.

Fine choice, Sweetpea!

If you are looking for a round up of the extensive group of people that contributed to what became known as Bloomsbury, you will be disappointed. There are some players that are generously represented and others, such as Sidney Saxon-Turner, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge, barely or not at all. As significant a drawback is the size of many reproductions. Whole album pages have been reproduced, which in and of itself is interesting, but is reduces the size of the photos such that frequently the people are so small as to be recognizable. Many of these photos have been reproduced in larger and more satisfactory formats in other biographies and memoirs. Also strange, even within the context, the quantity of photos of nude children reproduced here. Having just reread Quentin Bell's bio of his aunt Virginia I bought hoping to fill out the visual record. No such luck.

Nutty yet poignant

Have we found the smoking gun here? I doubt it

Bloomsbury has a posse!