THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP

Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson, writer and lecturer

The Bloomsbury Group, formed as the Victorian Age ended and the twentieth century unfolded, was a circle of friends united mainly by a belief in the value of personal relationships, art and reason. It produced many successful writers, including Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Katherine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot; at least two important painters, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell; two influential art critics, Roger Fry and Clive Bell; a distinguished political theorist/publisher, Leonard Woolf; and an internationally acclaimed economist, Maynard Keynes. In addition, it gave rise to the Hogarth Press and the Omega Workshops.

While the focus of the two hour lecture will be on Bloomsbury's writers, its artists will also be represented in this overview of the Group’s achievements.