Bloomsbury Group

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Virginia Woolf, photograph by George Charles Beresford , 1902
Vanessa Bell, photo by George Charles Beresford, 1902
Self-portrait by Dora Carrington, around 1910

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set or simply "Bloomsbury" or "Bloomsberries" as its followers / members called them, was an English group of artists, intellectuals and scholars that existed from 1905 to World War II and had a significant impact on England's cultural modernization would have. It held together a “complicated network of relationships that was constantly in motion, but always remained connected, interwoven through blood ties, friendship and marriages, through places and passions”.

history

The group was formed through repeated informal meetings between Cambridge University graduates and their peers and like-minded relatives and acquaintances. Some of them were also members of the Cambridge Apostles . These meetings took place in the houses of the members, mostly (before the First World War almost exclusively) in the London borough of Bloomsbury . During their meetings, the group created the setting for discussions, drama reading, exhibitions and private events. The members were not elected like the Apostles , there was no joint manifesto and no membership fees.

It was obviously of fundamental importance for the formation of the group that the four Stephen children - Vanessa (* 1879), Thoby (* 1880), Virginia (* 1882) and Adrian (* 1883) - in 1904, after death of both parents had moved into the house at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. When Thoby Stephen died in November 1906, the group had grown together so much that this did not affect the solidarity among the members. In retrospect, Clive Bell called "the two sisters with their homes in Gordon and Fitzroy Square the heart of it all".

Although the group is largely known for literature (with Virginia Woolf as its most famous representative), it had many different interests and fields of activity:

  • Photo by John Maynard Keynes

  • Self-portrait by Roger Fry, around 1928

  • Portrait EM Forster by Dora Carrington, 1924/25

  • Rupert Brooke , 1913

The performing arts received little attention in the group. For example, Lydia Lopokova , the wife of John Maynard Keynes, who was a professional ballet dancer, was seen and treated as an outsider by most of the “Bloomsberries”.

There were also close ties to Rupert Brooke and Neopaganism - the woodcutter Gwen Darwin and her husband, the French painter Jacques Raverat , to whom Virginia Woolf maintained a lively correspondence, belonged to this circle. Gwen's sister was with Maynard's brother Geoffrey Keynes married, whose passion for the works of William Blake that caused Gwen one on his Job - etchings created based ballet to which her cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams composed the music.

Charleston Farmhouse

During and after the First World War , the Charleston Farmhouse , where Vanessa Bell lived with her lover Duncan Grant and his lover David Garnett in a ménage à trois , became a popular meeting place for the group and the focus of the visual arts of the "Bloomsberries".

The group rejected military service in World War I out of pacifist sentiments; even Keynes, who was employed in the Treasury, registered himself as a conscientious objector . She practiced an unusually open approach to sexuality , including bisexual and homosexual orientations, for the time . Many of its members, for example John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson , had, in addition to their marriages, open relationships that were often same-sex and were tolerated or promoted by their respective spouses .

Common facilities

One of the foundations for joint activities of the “Bloomsberries” was the artist workshop Omega Workshops , founded by Roger Fry in 1913 , in which many of its members, including Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Nina Hamnett, took part, as well as the Hogarth Press . Then there was the Birrell & Garnett bookstore .

Omega artist workshop

Shortly before the First World War (1913), Roger Fry opened the Omega Workshops artist workshop at 33 Fitzroy Square with a party. In the workshop, sophisticated furniture and fabrics, carpets, curtains, ties, pillows, wallpaper, ceramics, dollhouses and other toys should be made. Fry wanted to create an additional income for the young artists he knew through design. In addition to Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant served as directors. In addition to the “Bloomsberries”, artist Nina Hammnet also worked for the workshop. Known because of her eccentric life as "La rein Bohème" (Queen of Bohème), she entered into a (not only business) liaison with Fry after her divorce .

Hogarth Press

Virginia and Leonard Woolf ran the Hogarth Press from 1917, first in their country house ("Hogarth House") and from 1924 in their London home. They initially set the books by hand and printed them by hand on a Minerva platen printing press that they had bought second-hand. In July 1917, production began with the delivery of Two Stories , a 34-page booklet each containing a story of the spouses, The Mark on the Wall of Virginia and Three Jews by Leonard Woolf. They moved TS Eliot back in the founding years . Virginia's third novel, Jacob's Room (1922) appeared in the Hogarth Press. It became one of the most important British publishers, not only publishing its own works, but also the writings of Gertrude Stein , HG Wells , EM Forster , Stephen Spender and WH Auden . It was the first British publisher to publish the translated works by Sigmund Freud .

Birrell & Garnett bookstore

The bookstore, run by novelist David Garnett and his friend Francis Birrell , a journalist and literary critic, on Gordon Square (19 Taviton Street) between 1919 and 1924, was "a popular meeting place for the 'Bloomsberries' who bought their books here" and Were "temporarily [...] the only customers".

Bloomsbury on the move

As members of a privileged and cultured class with leisure and means, the "Bloomsberries" went on trips together to Turkey and Greece, again and again to Spain, France and Germany, where they mainly visited the museums. It was thanks to Roger Fry that they discovered France for themselves - "art and cuisine, and an intellectual lifestyle that was comparatively free from hypocrisy". In 1912 Virginia went on honeymoon with Leonhard to France, Spain and Italy. Vanessa visited Rome and Florence with Duncan Grant and Maynard Keynes to see the original paintings by the Renaissance painters; On the return trip they met the painters Georges Braque and André Derain in Paris , whose works they represented in England.

Aftermath

For the writer Stephen Spender, the group had "the most constructive and creative influence on English taste between the two wars". Virginia Woolf 's 1929 essay A Room of One's Own (first translated into German in 1978) became one of the most cited texts of the new women's movement . In it, Woolf anticipated the thesis of the 1968 movement on the political character of the private. Quentin Bell (* 1910), the younger son of Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell, wrote a great biography of Virginia Woolf ( Virginia Woolf: A Biography . Two volumes. Hogarth Press, 1972; German Virginia Woolf. A biography , 1982) and a memory book of Bloomsbury, in which he lovingly describes the key participants in the group.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine Frick-Gerke (ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Pamela Todd: The World of Bloomsbury . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, pp. 80f.
  3. ↑ Hermione Lee : Virginia Woolf. One life. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999. Paperback 2006, p. 349 ff.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Michael Holroyd: A marriage proposal . In: Christine Frick-Gehrke (Ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 51–67, here p. 56.
  5. ↑ Frances Spalding: Love and Colors . In: Christine Frick-Gehrke (Ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 71–94, here p. 77 ff.
  6. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch : The art in society . 2nd Edition. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 137.
  7. ↑ Susanne Amarain: So secret and familiar. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Suhrkamp, ​​2006, ISBN 978-3-518-45826-6
  8. ↑ Mitchel Leaska, John Phillips: Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West . Viking, 1990
  9. ^ Nigel Nicolson : Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West & Harold Nicolson. Atheneum, 1973
  10. ↑ Pamela Todd: The World of Bloomsbury. In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf and her friends . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 84.
  11. ^ The story of omega workshops.
  12. ^ Duncan Heyes: The Hogarth Press
  13. ↑ Poems by TS Eliot
  14. ^ German edition: Jacobs room . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000,
  15. ^ Duncan Heyes: The Hogarth Press
  16. ^ Duncan Heyes: The Hogarth Press
  17. ↑ Walther Müller-Jentsch: The art in society . 2nd Edition. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 135 f.
  18. ↑ Christine Frick-Gehrke (ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 10.
  19. ↑. Frances Spalding: Love and Colors . In: Christine Frick-Gehrke (Ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 71–94, here p. 75.
  20. ↑ Pamela Todd: The World of Bloomsbury. In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf and her friends . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p, 165.
  21. ↑ Pamela Todd: The World of Bloomsbury. In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf and her friends . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p, 165.
  22. ↑ Quoted from Walther Müller-Jentsch: Art in society . 2nd Edition. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 137.
  23. ↑ Virginia Woolf: A room to yourself . Translated by Renate Gerhardt. Gerhardt-Verlag, Berlin 1978