Bloomsbury group, Early Modernist Writers

1. Bloomsbury Group
Early Modernist writers

2. Introduction
Small group of intellectuals, artist,
and writers who worked in the
Bloomsbury area of central London,
in the first half of the 20th century.

3. The "core" members were Woolf, her
sister Vanessa, Lytton Strachey, Thobey
Stephen, and Clive Bell.
This loose collective of friends and
relatives was closely associated with the
University of Cambridge for the men and
Kings College, London for the women,
and they lived, worked or studied
together near Bloomsbury London in
1904.

4. Foundation
After the death of their father, the Stephen
family moved from Kensington to the more
bohemian Bloomsbury, where they adopted a
free-spirited lifestyle. It was in Bloomsbury
where, in conjunction with the brothers'
intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and
literary Bloomsbury Group in 1904

5. The group frequently met between about 1907
and 1930 at the houses of Clive and Vanessa Bell
and of Vanessa’s brother and sister Adrian and
Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf) in
the Bloomsbury district of London

6. Inspiration
They discussed aesthetic and philosophical questions in a
spirit of agnosticism and were strongly influenced by G.E.
Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903) and by A.N. Whitehead’s
and Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica (1910–13), in
the light of which they searched for definitions of the good,
the true, and the beautiful and questioned accepted ideas
with a “comprehensive irreverence” for all kinds of sham.

7. Shared Ideas
Their ideas (such as their views on
traditional marriage) were considered
beyond radical
Produced revolutionary literature, forming
a bridge between the Victorians and the
Moderns

8. What was their mission?
• There was none!
• The group had no formal mission, they gathered as
friends and had no serious political agenda
• Despite having no agenda, their ideas and writings
were groundbreaking and continue to be
influential for creative artists of every medium
today
• Many of them were leaders of anti-war movements
and social issues of the day
• There was no "initiation process"

9. Some of its best known members were
Virginia Woolf,
John Maynard Keynes
E.M. Forster and
Lytton Strachey

10. Virginia Woolf
She was considered to be the central figure and de facto
leader of the group
She later met Strachey, Bell, and Keynes, all of whom
became the "nucleus" of the intellectual circle of artists and
writers who made up the group

11. Virginia Woolf
• Woolf's beliefs and the topics discussed at Bloomsbury meetings
spilled into her work
• Feminism, sexual liberation, and pacifism were among the ideas
Woolf explored in her writing
• A Room of One's Own, an essay by Woolf, is an important piece
in the history of feminist literature
• Some of Mrs. Dalloway’s themes reflect the modernist ideas
Woolf and her colleagues discussed in the Bloomsbury Group
meetings

12. Their Influences
Their works and outlook deeply influenced
Literature
Aesthetics
Criticism
Economics
as well as modern attitudes towards
Feminism
Pacifism
Sexuality

13. Hogarth Press
In 1917 the Woolfs founded their Hogarth
Press which would publish T.S.Eliot, Katherin
Mansfield and many others including Virginia
herself along with the standard English
translations of Freud

14. Criticism
• Their radical politics made them a target for
mockery in the media
• Their private lives were exposed
• Their unconventional modes of living and
their relaxed views on polygamous
relationships made it easy for people to
dismiss them as insane

15. “They lived in squares, painted in circles
and loved in triangles”.

16. Thank you

17. Lytton Strachey
1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic.
A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he is best
known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and
sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His biography Queen Victoria (1921) was
awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

18. Katherine Mansfield
14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent New Zealand modernist short story
writer and poet who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under
the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At the age of 19, she left New Zealand and settled
in England, where she became a friend of writers such as D. H. Lawrence and Virginia
Woolf. Mansfield was diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in 1917; the disease
claimed her life at the age of 34.

19. Virginia Woolf
25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most
important modernist 20th-century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream
of consciousness as a narrative device.

20. Virginia Woolf
• Woolf's beliefs and the topics discussed at Bloomsbury meetings
spilled into her work
• Feminism, sexual liberation, and pacifism were among the ideas
Woolf explored in her writing
• A Room of One's Own, an essay by Woolf, is an important piece
in the history of feminist literature
• Some of Mrs. Dalloway’s themes reflect the modernist ideas
Woolf and her colleagues discussed in the Bloomsbury Group
meetings

21. 1905 caused another mental breakdown for Woolf. Following his death, the Stephen family
moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where they adopted a free-
spirited lifestyle. It was in Bloomsbury where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual
friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group.

22. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917 the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which
published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940.
Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by her mental illness. She was institutionalised several
times and attempted suicide at least twice. Her illness may have been bipolar disorder, for which
there was no effective intervention during her lifetime. In 1941, at age 59, Woolf died by putting
rocks in her coat pockets and drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes

23. Leonard Woolf
25 November 1880 – 14 August 1969) was a British political theorist, author, publisher and
civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf.

24. Dorothy Richardson
17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957) was a British author and journalist. Author of Pilgrimage, a
sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though
Richardson saw them as chapters of one work—she was one of the
earliest modernist novelists to use stream of consciousness as a narrative technique.
Richardson also emphasizes in Pilgrimage the importance and distinct nature of female
experiences. The title Pilgrimage alludes not only to "the journey of the artist ... to self-
realization but, more practically, to the discovery of a unique creative form and
expression".

25. D. H. Lawrence
11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works
represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects
of modernity and industrialisation. Some of the issues Lawrence explores are sexuality,
emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.

26. Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist,
publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.[2] Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a
prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on
to settle, work and marry there. He became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39,
subsequently renouncing his American citizenship.[3]

27. Considered one of the twentieth century's major poets, Eliot attracted widespread attention
for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of
the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English
language, including The Waste Land (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930),
and Four Quartets (1943).[4] He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the
Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".[5][6]

28. James Joyce
2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and
literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most
influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a
landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary
styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story
collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published
letters and occasional journalism.