Young Bloomsbury: the generation that reimagined love, freedom and self-expression

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We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. First, I was quite happy that I really do know quite a lot about the Bloomsbury Group, because you need to know the major members of the group or you'll be completely lost with this book. An extraordinary account of the bustling non-binary heart of the literary and artistic roaring twenties, filled with the most vivid characters, who lived and loved under the shadow of the horror of conversion therapy and yet found ways to express themselves so boldly and beautifully. I have long known of and been interested in the Bloomsbury Group - they are an incredibly well documented, romanticised and, dare I say it, likely overdone in many ways… However, bringing a fresh new lens to the second generation of the group, particularly as written by a direct descendent really reignited this for me.

The survivors, riven by the upheaval of the Second World War and the loss of their beloved contemporaries, drift into the conventionality they so staunchly fought against. Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author. The most baffling part of the book, for me, came in the last chapters and the exploration of James Strachey's life that lead him to the USA and the bohemian scene there. but this book goes into much more detail about their lives, loves, ability to express themselves freely and be open to all sexual orientations and gender expression.It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.

Revealing an aspect of history not yet explored and with “effervescent detail” (Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake ), Young Bloomsbury celebrates an open way of living and loving that would not be embraced for another hundred years. After a fairly engaging start, the book starts to feel like a bit like you’re stuck at a party where everyone else already knows each other and think they’re way too cool for you anyway. I've read quite a number of books about Woolf, Forster, Strachey, Carrington, Grant and the rest - this was something new, an original perspective. Written, of course, by a member of the Strachey family who had access to privately-held documents from family and friends, Nino Strachey brings some more obscure figures into the light of day while also presenting the more familiar figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Lytton Stratchey, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, E. Revealing an aspect of history not yet explored and with “effervescent detail” (Juliet Nicolson, author of Frostquake), Young Bloomsbury celebrates an open way of living and loving that would not be embraced for another hundred years.Sure, he was a member of the younger Bloomsbury set, but still, I couldn't understand why he was singled out. Essentially this is a group who, despite their blatant privileges and lust for the finer things in life, ultimately chose to campaign for a fairer future, and liberation for all - even at the disinclination of their family and many peers. As skepticism, admiration, envy, and confusion ebb and flow between one chattering, seductive, thinking, inspiring generation and another, this is Gatsby made real.

Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives. And I realise that’s complex because we’re talking about real people who lived real lives and it’s not really my business what they liked to do in bed.

You walk in an alley sheltered and comely … your hedges are grown so tall that you know nothing of the sun, save that he falls sometimes perpendicular on your vanity and warms your self-complacency at noon. A hundred years ahead of their time, these creative souls were pushing the boundaries of gender identity and sexual expression, and - surprisingly - finding acceptance among their friends and families. I don’t think these people acted from any desire to free up society as much as to get as much sex as possible with either gender which fair enough, provided it was consensual and I’m not entirely sure it always was.

Their abiding ethos is to challenge the stodgy, restrictive conventions of the Victorian Era and burst newness upon the world of arts and letters. I am mostly left with a newfound appreciation for found queer families and clubs, and am happy to report they were alive and well in 1920s London.M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey among them—began to make a name for themselves in England and America for their irreverent spirit and provocative works of literature, art, and criticism. Her focus isn’t on the Bloomsbury Group itself, instead she turns her gaze on the younger generations who became its avid fans and followers. I was surprised that she gave the young women such short shrift, though, after pages and pages of handsome Oxford and Cambridge men and their gay affairs. M. Forster, and others in the context of a "found family," welcoming queerness in many forms and celebrating uniqueness even as the groups members can also doll out ruthless quips about one another in their writing.