"If this is dying, I don't think much of it", Lytton Strachey, the essayist, critic and great thinker, said on his deathbed. This rather cynical and witty attitude to life was typical of the Bloomsbury group. Now back in fashion because of the recent film 'The Hours', which features Nicole Kidman as famous writer Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury set were a wild and modern group of intellectuals who revolted against the prudish mores of Victorian society. Brilliant and artistic, they included other famous writers such as E.M.Forster, painters such as Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell and the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes who is credited with beginning the 'Welfare State'.
Virginia Woolf who started the 'stream of consciousness' method of writing, a continual description of a person's thoughts, is probably the best known of the Bloomsbury set. Her rather sad novels which include To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, a story about a bored housewife, are still very popular. Like many of this Bohemian crowd, Virginia, who was married to Leonard Woolf, was gay. Her lover, Vita Sackville-West, was also a writer, but is now better known for her beautiful gardens.
This kind of intertwined relationships and passionate affairs was typical of the Bloomsbury set, which was named after the now somewhat drab area of London in which they lived. Lytton Strachey, for example, best-known for his book Eminent Victorians, also lived in a somewhat strange kind of love triangle. A homosexual, he lived with the painter Dora Carrington and her husband Ralph Partridge. He and Ralph were lovers, but he also had a very fiery relationship with Dora, who was played by Emma Thompson in the film 'Carrington'.
This glittering Bohemianism has its appeal, but many of the Bloomsbury set, like many artists, sound like a miserable lot. Virginia Woolf, for example, who had a brilliant future ahead of her, was clinically depressed and committed suicide at a young age. When Lytton Stracy lay dying of stomach cancer, Dora tried to asphyxiate herself in the garage downstairs. "Revived, she watched him die and said she couldn't go on. He was the love of her life."1.
After the Second World War, the Bloomsbury set got a bad press. They were called by one commentator, for example, "a precious coterie of back-stabbing creeps".2. They certainly struck out against Victorian morals in an ostentatious manner and there is not much doubt that they set out to shock. But they also set society aflame by their brilliant achievements and modernism. Much of their literature and art has withstood the test of time. Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster's books, for example, are still classics.
Go To Page: 1 2
