In and out of Bloomsbury: Biographical Essays on Twentieth-Century Writers and Artists

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These highly original essays illuminate Virginia Woolf and a selection of other twentieth-century writers and artists. Based on detailed research and presenting previously unpublished texts, pictures, and photographs, they are notable feats of scholarly detective work.

Six of them focus on four pivotal members of the Bloomsbury Group Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, and Roger Fry. Prominent ingredients of their story include art, writing, friendship, love, sex, mental illness, and Greek travel. The five 'out of Bloomsbury' essays are about the 'new' letters from the novelist Rose Macaulay to the Irish poet Katharine Tynan; the prodigious teenage talents of Dorothy L. Sayers; the remarkable story of Tolkien's schoolmaster R. W. Reynolds; and the artist Tristram Hillier in Portugal.

The collection creates a richly varied and entertaining picture of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century.

Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2022

'In this masterful collection of essays, he [Martin Ferguson Smith] shines a welcome new light on the oft-told stories of the Bloomsbury Group and their acquaintances, correcting errors, filling in gaps and revealing much new information. The Times Literary Supplement

Reviews

'In this masterful collection of essays, he [Martin Ferguson Smith] shines a welcome new light on the oft-told stories of the Bloomsbury Group and their acquaintances, correcting errors, filling in gaps and revealing much 'new' information.'
The Times Literary Supplement

'In and out of Bloomsbury introduces its readers to people who grappled with sorrows and setbacks with admirable fortitude, and it is a delight from beginning to end.'
English Studies

'Smith brings a depth of knowledge and a level of meticulous scholarship to these biographical essays about important literary, artistic and historical figures of the early twentieth century that would be difficult to equal, let alone surpass.'
Virginia Woolf Bulletin

Delightfully written essays packed with revelations, many of them arising from Martin Ferguson Smiths access to hitherto unpublished sources. A scrupulously scholarly book that will be read with pleasure and astonishment from the first page to the last.
Professor Robin Simon, editor of The British Art Journal

Like an intrepid archaeologist carefully unearthing treasures, Martin Ferguson Smith brings to light through painstaking research all kinds of new facts about and relationships among the subjects of these fascinating essays.
Mark Hussey, Distinguished Professor of English, Pace University, New York City, author of Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism: A Biography

These meticulously researched essays are a testimony to the wonderful breadth and depth of Martin Ferguson Smiths scholarship. They present a wealth of colourful new material on artists and writers both famous and forgotten, at the heart as well as at the periphery of Bloomsbury. Both the specialist and the general reader will find plenty of interest here.
Professor Odin Dekkers, former editor of English Studies

Author Bio

Martin Ferguson Smith is Professor Emeritus of Classics at Durham University