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Overview
In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell has written an extraordinary memoir of the circle of intellectuals in London early in this century know as the Bloomsbury group. Bell offers remarkable judgments about and recollections of each of the notable people among whom he came of age. Here are Bell's candid portraits of his parents, Clive and Vanessa Bell - Virginia Woolf's sister - Vanessa's lover, Duncan Grant, and of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, and others who frequented Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and Charleston, the Bells' country place in Sussex. The stories of this enchanting extended family, the private lives of these public figures, have all the magic and intrigue of the best novels of the day. Bloomsbury Recalled, in the expansive storytelling tradition of the early modernists, re-creates the captivating theater of events that was Bloomsbury.Synopsis
In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell has written an extraordinary memoir of the circle of intellectuals in London early in this century know as the Bloomsbury group. Bell offers remarkable judgments about and recollections of each of the notable people among whom he came of age. Here are Bell's candid portraits of his parents, Clive and Vanessa Bell - Virginia Woolf's sister - Vanessa's lover, Duncan Grant, and of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, and others who frequented Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and Charleston, the Bells' country place in Sussex. The stories of this enchanting extended family, the private lives of these public figures, have all the magic and intrigue of the best novels of the day. Bloomsbury Recalled, in the expansive storytelling tradition of the early modernists, re-creates the captivating theater of events that was Bloomsbury.
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. (Mar.)
Editorials
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. (Mar.)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.Booknews
Bell's childhood memoir is as remarkable for its parade of literary figures as for its subtle and poetic prose, containing evocative portraits of his parent's friends and relatives who comprised London's Bloomsbury group in the early 20th century. The parents, Clive and Vanessa Bell--Virginia Woolf's sister--Woolf herself, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell, Ethel Smyth, Anthony Blunt, Lawrence Gowing, and Claude Rogers are some of the public notables whose personal lives are remembered with keen wit, insight, and a sense of intrigue. Two appendices on Woolf and Keynes critically examine their work in relation to their private lives. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Kirkus Reviews
Brief, disjointed autobiographical remembrances of Bloomsbury's great and not-so-great from one of its last surviving members.From Maynard Keynes to the Stracheys, the gang's all here, but broadly sketched with a handful of usually unremarkable anecdotes that rarely reflect novelist and biographer Bell's (The Brandon Papers, 1985; Virginia Woolf, 1972; etc.) unique access. Instead of insights, we are treated to reminiscences of pleasant picnics and visits to art museums or a party where someone behaved not quite appropriately. Bell is a little more revealing when he turns to the members of his extended family and their byzantine relationships. He includes sketches of them all: His parents, critic Clive Bell and painter Vanessa Bell, and both her lovers, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, as well as Grant's lover David "Bunny" Garnett, who later married Vanessa's daughter by Grant, Angela. Bell treats all this potentially prurient material in a formal, no-sex-please-we're- British manner that comes across not so much as tactful as strangely detached. His emotional tone is the same whether he is writing about distant acquaintances, such as the notorious traitor Anthony Blunt, or about his father's many infidelities. In fact, the tone throughout tends toward a cool, low-key flatness, though there are moments of wit and perception, even revelation.
Usually Bell is a first-rate biographer. His book on Virginia Woolf is sympathetic, incisive, and cogently coherent. Perhaps this book's fatal flaw is its structuring device, an awkward mix of autobiography and biography. But nothing hangs together. It is like flipping through an artist's sketchbook, everything raw and disordered. Or worse, like sitting in someone's living room and being forced to go through their family photo albums.