A rare Bloomsbury treat: delightful, candid and unique autobiographical writings by Vanessa Bell, in an attractive volume illustrated with her own woodcuts and drawings, with an introduction by her daughter Angelica Garnett and an essay on Vanessa Bell's art. 19980728
Vanessa Bell was born on the 30 May 1879. The sister of Virginia Woolf she was educated at home by her parents in languages, mathematics and history, and took drawing lessons from Ebenezer Cook before she attended Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896, and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901. She married Clive Bell in 1907 and they had two sons together. The couple had an open marriage during which Vanessa Bell had affairs with art critic Roger Fry and with the painter Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica in 1918. She died in 1961.
This attractive and authoritatively edited book presents six memoirs (and a school lecture on art) written by the artist Vanessa Stephen Bell (1879-1961), Virginia Woolf's sister and a pivotal participant in the famed Bloomsbury Group. The pieces offer enticing reading because of the insider's perspective they offer of that renowned literary association. Bell's subjects are drawn from the first 35 years of her life and center on her family‘grandmother, father, siblings, and in-laws. She recalls her affairs with Roger Fry and Duncan Grant and, in "Notes on Bloomsbury," vigorously sets the record straight about that "circle of friends." Not originally intended for publication, the essays are candid, witty, and personally revealing. Bell's own woodcuts and drawings decorate the text. Recommended for academic libraries as a supplement to Francis Spalding's Vanessa Bell (1983) and Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell (Pantheon, 1993).‘Carol Ann McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA
If the glut of recent books on the subject is any indication, interest in Bloomsbury has hardly abated, and with recent movies such as Orlando or Mrs. Dalloway, it may have increased. This loose collection of seven short essays represents the surviving memoirs of Vanessa Bell, the "Queen Bee" of that famous group. An introduction by her daughter, Angelica Garnett, gives us a little background on the author and a lot in the way of an apology: because these essays were originally written for the Memoir Club, which consisted of close friends, Bell had to choose her words carefully. Her reserve shows. Bell strips out the interesting details of her life and leaves only the familiar outline. She virtually ignores her husband, Clive Bell, and her lover, Duncan Grant, and turns her affair with Roger Fry into something passionless. Bell even manages to make life at Bloomsbury sound dull. The reader longs for something personal, but these vignettes fail to emotionally engage the outside reader‘perhaps because they were written for friends already intimately familiar with the details. A fairly disappointing collection with a slightly misleading subtitle: only half of the essays are about the Bloomsbury Group. The attempt in the concluding essay to elevate Bell's stature beyond that of a minor artist is unconvincing. This is another addition to the groaning bookshelves of devoted Bloomsberries but not beyond. 14 b&w illustrations. (May)
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