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Bloomsbury, a House of Lions
Avon paperback. 1979. Crease at lower corner of front cover, otherwise fine. Same day shipping. Seller guarantees complete satisfaction.
333 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
2 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Leon Edel
142 books7 followersJoseph Leon Edel was a American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. Edel taught English and American literature at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) from 1932 until 1934, New York University from 1953 until 1972, and at University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1972 until 1978. From 1944 to 1952, he worked as a reporter and feature writer for the left-wing New York newspapers PM and the Daily Compass.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 31, 2013
"Bloomsbury: A House of Lions" is another book that I have come across whilst looking for the "Cambridge Apostles" an hour or so ago.
I went through a period of my life, about twenty or so years ago, when I devoured any book about the Bloomsbury Group. I had started with Lytton Strachey and slowly read works, mainly biographies/letters/diaries on Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova, Carrington, Desmond MacCathy, and Duncan Grant, etc. There were others, of course, on the fringe such as Aldous Huxley but the former were the individuals who continued to fascinate me, as they still do today in fact.
Leon Edel has written an amazing book here (published by the "ever-famous" Hogarth Press in 1979) and the following review given upon its publication couldn't have been better:
"With sustained literary power Leon Edel has brought into a strong, unified narrative all the complicated lives - hilarious, eccentric, and often tragic - of these gifted and inexorable individualists who together made up the most notorious literary coterie of modern England."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
This is actually quite an intimate portrait of these individuals' lives and the images of paintings by Vanessa Bell of the "divine" Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, etc. show the remarkable painting style of this multi-faceted individual.
I particularly liked the parts about Leonard's time in Ceylon, times and life in Gordon Square and especially to see Virginia Stephen, as she was at the time, slowing developing with her own unique writing style, thanks to the men who surrounded her, I believe. Her style may also have been influenced by the sudden tragic death of her brother Thoby in 1906 and her depressions leading to nervous breakdowns throughout her life.
A delightful book and highly recommended to Bloomsbury lovers and admirers.
I went through a period of my life, about twenty or so years ago, when I devoured any book about the Bloomsbury Group. I had started with Lytton Strachey and slowly read works, mainly biographies/letters/diaries on Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova, Carrington, Desmond MacCathy, and Duncan Grant, etc. There were others, of course, on the fringe such as Aldous Huxley but the former were the individuals who continued to fascinate me, as they still do today in fact.
Leon Edel has written an amazing book here (published by the "ever-famous" Hogarth Press in 1979) and the following review given upon its publication couldn't have been better:
"With sustained literary power Leon Edel has brought into a strong, unified narrative all the complicated lives - hilarious, eccentric, and often tragic - of these gifted and inexorable individualists who together made up the most notorious literary coterie of modern England."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
This is actually quite an intimate portrait of these individuals' lives and the images of paintings by Vanessa Bell of the "divine" Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, etc. show the remarkable painting style of this multi-faceted individual.
I particularly liked the parts about Leonard's time in Ceylon, times and life in Gordon Square and especially to see Virginia Stephen, as she was at the time, slowing developing with her own unique writing style, thanks to the men who surrounded her, I believe. Her style may also have been influenced by the sudden tragic death of her brother Thoby in 1906 and her depressions leading to nervous breakdowns throughout her life.
A delightful book and highly recommended to Bloomsbury lovers and admirers.
November 5, 2015
This book is a great read for any Bloomsbury fan, but it definitely has its flaws.
Positives:
- focuses on the menfolk of Bloomsbury, which is a somewhat unusual perspective
- goes back to Bloomsbury's "roots" in Cambridge
- compelling (if not entirely believable) characterization of the principle figures
- weaves the social web beautifully
Negatives:
- DATED
- ... which leads Edel to a strange over-reliance on pop psychoanalysis (i.e. fixation on the mother explaining Strachey's personality)
- ... and to make some extremely simplistic conclusions about relationships in Bloomsbury based on his perception of the gender binary (how "men act" vs. how "women act")
- also ends somewhat abruptly! I'd love a few more chapters, even with Edel's weirdness.
Still a great read, but I wouldn't rely on it for a complete picture of Bloomsbury.
Positives:
- focuses on the menfolk of Bloomsbury, which is a somewhat unusual perspective
- goes back to Bloomsbury's "roots" in Cambridge
- compelling (if not entirely believable) characterization of the principle figures
- weaves the social web beautifully
Negatives:
- DATED
- ... which leads Edel to a strange over-reliance on pop psychoanalysis (i.e. fixation on the mother explaining Strachey's personality)
- ... and to make some extremely simplistic conclusions about relationships in Bloomsbury based on his perception of the gender binary (how "men act" vs. how "women act")
- also ends somewhat abruptly! I'd love a few more chapters, even with Edel's weirdness.
Still a great read, but I wouldn't rely on it for a complete picture of Bloomsbury.
June 13, 2011
Maynard Keynes wrote,"We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the
personality and the will of a very few,and only maintained by rules and conventions
skillfully put across and guilefully preserved."
The Bloomsbury Group certainly did their share as gracefully recounted by
Leon Edel. Are there modern groups of this stature?
Where was the scientist in the group?
personality and the will of a very few,and only maintained by rules and conventions
skillfully put across and guilefully preserved."
The Bloomsbury Group certainly did their share as gracefully recounted by
Leon Edel. Are there modern groups of this stature?
Where was the scientist in the group?
June 23, 2012
Virginia Woolf has been over-biographed, so no surprises there, but I am a new convert to the cult of Lytton Strachey? Where can I get a copy of Eminent Victorians? I hear it's the second most stolen book, after Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, which is quite a recommendation.
In the end, though, as a pacifist, I'm more of a Garsington man than a Bloomsbury man.
In the end, though, as a pacifist, I'm more of a Garsington man than a Bloomsbury man.
March 2, 2018
This was one of the first biographies (well, not of a person but of a group of people) that I ever read. I was a teenager and I remember being totally engrossed in it, so at the very least it's easy to read and very entertaining. I don't know where I put the volume but I really want to give it another go -now that I'm older- and make a proper review.
Want to read
October 26, 2014This is maybe emerging as the best choice for a Bloomsbury book...
November 14, 2024
Before Goodreads, I kept a handwritten reading journal. It was for books I deemed different or special. I was fascinated by the synthesis of thought and art by nine figures who were friends in Bloomsbury in the early years of the 20th century. They were:
Economist Maynard Keynes, writer-publishers Leonard and Virginia Woolf, writer Lytton Strachey, painting critic Clive Bell, writing critic Desmond MacCarthy and painters Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.
The friends pushed one another to be more than the sum of their parts would suggest. The most interesting to me was Keynes, a brilliant thinker about whom I knew nothing before I read Leon Edel’s book. He seemed to epitomize dichotomies to me: bisexual, a pacifist who contributed to the war effort, both artist and craftsman, theoretical and practical. Never contradictory. Who knew?!
Virginia and Vanessa were sisters and competitors for salon patrons, when that was a large social dynamic. Vanessa seemed to me to represent the sanity of art and Virginia a more troubled dynamic. Leonard Woolf, often overlooked in writing about his wife (Virginia), is interesting in his own right.
The long-term relationships within the group “show how friendship and propinquity, love and marriage, and the various minuets and sarabands of personal relations loosened the hard intellectuality of early Bloomsbury,” Edel wrote.
My take (at 25) found fault with Edel’s pretentious writing (see previous paragraph) and expressed a desire for more meat and fewer potatoes.
Economist Maynard Keynes, writer-publishers Leonard and Virginia Woolf, writer Lytton Strachey, painting critic Clive Bell, writing critic Desmond MacCarthy and painters Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.
The friends pushed one another to be more than the sum of their parts would suggest. The most interesting to me was Keynes, a brilliant thinker about whom I knew nothing before I read Leon Edel’s book. He seemed to epitomize dichotomies to me: bisexual, a pacifist who contributed to the war effort, both artist and craftsman, theoretical and practical. Never contradictory. Who knew?!
Virginia and Vanessa were sisters and competitors for salon patrons, when that was a large social dynamic. Vanessa seemed to me to represent the sanity of art and Virginia a more troubled dynamic. Leonard Woolf, often overlooked in writing about his wife (Virginia), is interesting in his own right.
The long-term relationships within the group “show how friendship and propinquity, love and marriage, and the various minuets and sarabands of personal relations loosened the hard intellectuality of early Bloomsbury,” Edel wrote.
My take (at 25) found fault with Edel’s pretentious writing (see previous paragraph) and expressed a desire for more meat and fewer potatoes.
April 14, 2024
Every mentally ill, queer, English Literature lover has experienced an obsession with Virginia Woolf - and I am no exception. However, as Virginia Woolf is one of the most overly biographed writers in the British canon, Leon Edel's approach of expanding the focus to encompass the Bloomsbury Group as a whole is surprisingly refreshing. Insightful and intimate, this biography tells the story of each individual's lives (Lytton Stratchey is a new literary favourite of mine), dredging up information that an amateur Woolf-obsessive, such as myself, won't have come across.
Problems? The pseudo-psychoanalytical explanations for people's (particularly Stratchey's) personalities (it was written in the 70s after all) and the constant reduction of the groups' diverse experiences of sexuality, identity, and beliefs to the gender binary (but then again, it was written in the 70s).
Whether you are looking for references for an essay or you just want to know a bit more about the Bloomsbury group, then this is one for you (just skimread the bits where Edel does some of his weird blathering, you'll know it when you see it).
Problems? The pseudo-psychoanalytical explanations for people's (particularly Stratchey's) personalities (it was written in the 70s after all) and the constant reduction of the groups' diverse experiences of sexuality, identity, and beliefs to the gender binary (but then again, it was written in the 70s).
Whether you are looking for references for an essay or you just want to know a bit more about the Bloomsbury group, then this is one for you (just skimread the bits where Edel does some of his weird blathering, you'll know it when you see it).
March 3, 2021
Spending time with Virginia Woolf and court. An absorbing book read from the perspective of someone who has delved into Bloomsbury biographies for forty or more years and devoured any book about the Bloomsbury Group I could find. My main quibble is the elephant in the room. How to trust a book written in 1979, when homosexuality was legal, and which talks about Maynard and Lytton's homosexuality and totally ignores Duncan and Bunny and the triangle with Vanessa.
I had started with Lytton Strachey and slowly read works, mainly biographies/letters/diaries on Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova, Carrington, Desmond MacCathy, and Duncan Grant, etc. There were others, of course, on the fringe such as David Garnett, Ottoline Morrell, Angelica Bell, Katharine Mansfield, D.H.Lawrence, Aldous Huxley but the core group were the individuals who continued to fascinate me, as they still do today in fact as I reread my entire collection once more.
I had started with Lytton Strachey and slowly read works, mainly biographies/letters/diaries on Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova, Carrington, Desmond MacCathy, and Duncan Grant, etc. There were others, of course, on the fringe such as David Garnett, Ottoline Morrell, Angelica Bell, Katharine Mansfield, D.H.Lawrence, Aldous Huxley but the core group were the individuals who continued to fascinate me, as they still do today in fact as I reread my entire collection once more.
November 12, 2019
3.5 stars. This is a picture/group biography[/microhistory] of the heart of Bloomsbury--the major players up through 1920. He includes the Woolfs, the Bells, Keynes, Strachey, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and Desmond McCarthy. It was very interesting, particularly the people shown I did not know as much about--Leonard, for instance, was a political weight in the Labor Party, albeit behind the scenes. My only complaints were that L.E. tended to reiterate his own themes about them a little too often and possibly even be a little patronizing. On the other hand, he recognized (as the stereotype of Bloomsbury does not) their incredible work discipline and productivity, which. combined with their genius, made them a formidable cultural power.
August 7, 2013
Incredibly comprehensive overview of the principal members of the Bloomsbury group. This book gives great insight into the dynamics of the group, the personal motivating factors of each member and how their personal lives impacted on their artistic output. Definately a tantalising introduction to the group, making me want to further explore certain members oeuvre. Much easier to visualise their ground-breaking lifestyle and aesthetic ethos after having visited Charleston Farmhouse and Monk's House in Sussex.
September 28, 2012
This is an excellent, scholarly study of the nine pricipal denizens of Bloomsbury. In addition to informative discussions of each individual, the author presents an interesting portrait of Bloomsbury as a concept and a cultural entity. There is much to be learned from this book.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews