An introduction to the Bloomsbury Group

Why does the Bloomsbury group still attract attention today, over 90 years after its heyday? This course introduces you to the fascinating group of artists, writers and thinkers who came together as a circle of friends, then went on to play an influential role in British cultural life in the early decades of the 20th century and beyond. We will focus upon two novels, A Room With A View by E M Forster and Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, as well as biography (Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey) and essays by Roger Fry and John Maynard Keynes. What bound this group together? How did they react to contemporary ideas of art, literature and political thought? What role did Cambridge play in the development of their ideas? What were their major accomplishments?

You will need to read the prescribed texts in preparation for the course as they will form the focus of analytical ‘close reading’ in class. Textual study will enable us to engage with the literary expression of ideas before broadening into wider debate on Bloomsbury’s influence upon fiction, biography, art theory and practice, and social history. The Cambridge Companion to the Bloomsbury Group provides an excellent overview of the ideas we will encounter, and you may want to extend your reading to include biographies of the key figures: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E M Forster.