Bloomsbury Recalled

Rating:
Summary: Disappointingly thin view of Bloomsbury
Review: Despite the fact that the late Quentin Bell was a peripheral part of the Bloomsbury circle don't look for this book to be very informative. The mini-bios Bell lays out for the various members are quite shallow and inchoate for the most part and the occasional sprinklings of anecdotal material do not make up for the lack of substance overall which will hardly fill the apetite of the curious. Generally the book is too ambitious in trying to provide meaningful sketches of the lives of several fascinating historical figures each of whom could fill many volumes of interesting reading alone. Nor is any attempt made by Bell to try to help the reader understand the genesis or the historical significance of the Bloomsbury movement. For a reader unacquainted with Bloomsbury who wants an easy somewhat fluffy read maybe...anyone with a real interest in the movement might want to pass.

Rating:
Summary: The Bloomsbury Set, recalled from inside out
Review: In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell, one of the sons of Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa, recalls those deeply interesting people of the infamous Bloomsbury Set in a collection of anecdotal and biographical sketches. It seems that anybody who was anyone in the world of art, letters, literature, and/or intellectuals appeared at some time within this circle of friends and lovers. This loose and shifting group of people alternately lived, worked, and loved together between 1900-1940, and included Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa and Clive Bell, E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and many other names that are familiar to today's readers. These personal recollections from Quentin Bell's childhood memories are a delight to read and prove enlightening not only with regard to his subjects but also of Bell himself.

Rating:
Summary: An Amusing Memoir
Review: The Bloomsbury section of London, which includes the British Museum and University College, is famous in literary circles as the former stomping ground of "the Bloomsbury group," a handful of Cambridge-educated intellectuals, notably Roger Fry (who founded the Omega Workshops), E.M. Forster, Lytton Stratchey, Virginia Woolf, and Woolf's sister, Vanessa, who was married to the critic Clive Bell (remembered for having invented the phrase "significant form"). The author is an artist, writer and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, who was born at Gordon Square in Bloomsbury in 1910. More than 60 years later, he published a two-volume biography of his aunt, titled Virginia Woolf; and now, at age 85, has written an often amusing memoir of her, his parents and other eccentric literary celebrities who resided or commonly visited there. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 11 No 4, Summer 1996)

Rating:
Summary: An Amusing Memoir
Review: The Bloomsbury section of London, which includes the British Museum and University College, is famous in literary circles as the former stomping ground of "the Bloomsbury group," a handful of Cambridge-educated intellectuals, notably Roger Fry (who founded the Omega Workshops), E.M. Forster, Lytton Stratchey, Virginia Woolf, and Woolf's sister, Vanessa, who was married to the critic Clive Bell (remembered for having invented the phrase "significant form"). The author is an artist, writer and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, who was born at Gordon Square in Bloomsbury in 1910. More than 60 years later, he published a two-volume biography of his aunt, titled Virginia Woolf; and now, at age 85, has written an often amusing memoir of her, his parents and other eccentric literary celebrities who resided or commonly visited there. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 11 No 4, Summer 1996)