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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 Based on detailed research and presenting previously unpublished texts, pictures, and photographs, they are notable feats of scholarly detective work.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 M.B. Berger Prize for British Art History 2022
'Delightfully written essays packed with revelations.'
Robin Simon, editor of The British Art Journal
'A wealth of colourful new material.'
Odin Dekkers, former editor of English Studies
'Fascinating essays.'
Mark Hussey, distinguished Bloomsbury scholar
'Masterful.'
The Times Literary Supplement
'A delight from beginning to end.'
English Studies
'Both instructs and inspires.'
Literature Cambridge
Preface
Introduction
1 'New' Portraits by Roger Fry of Helen Fry and Vanessa Bell
2 A Complete Strip-off: A Bloomsbury Threesome in the Nude at Studland
3 Clive Bell’s Memoir of Annie Raven-Hill (co-written with Helen Walasek)
4 'Far the Best Holiday for Years': Virginia Woolf’s Second Visit to Greece
5 'Suicidal Mania' and Flawed Psychobiography: Two Discussions of Virginia Woolf
6 Virginia Woolf and 'the Hermaphrodite': A Feminist Fan of Orlando and Critic of Roger Fry
7 'I Am Afraid I Am not Irish': Letters from Rose Macaulay to Katharine Tynan
8 A Teenage Star: The Forgotten Contribution of Dorothy L. Sayers to a Pageant
9 'She Had Quite Unusual Gifts': Dorothy L. Sayers at School
10 The Secret Love-Child of an American Civil War Commander: The Strange Story of
Tolkien’s Schoolteacher
11 'A land pre-eminently to inspire a painter': Tristram Hillier’s first visit to Portugal
Details of original publications
Index