Young Bloomsbury: the generation that reimagined love, freedom and self-expression

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Any book in which the central cohort describe themselves as ‘very gay and amorous’ is going to be a winner for me tbh, and this was no exception. Frankly, the only reason can independently identify Roger Senhouse is because he apparently enacted a sexy crucifixion scene with Lytton Strachey. Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like.

M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey among them—began to make a name for themselves in England and America for their irreverent spirit and provocative works of literature, art, and criticism. This lively group biography offers an intimate glimpse of the Bright Young Things, the artistic coterie that emerged in the nineteen-twenties as successors to the prewar Bloomsburyites.An “illuminating” ( Daily Mail, London) exploration of the second generation of the iconic Bloomsbury Group who inspired their elders to new heights of creativity and passion while also pushing the boundaries of sexual freedom and gender norms in 1920s England. For a book which is tracing a sort of counterculture, it feels remarkably staid where I wanted flamboyance and something a bit more exciting. If you've read about the Bloomsberries before then this book over-promises and doesn't wholly deliver on its premise. In any case, Young Bloomsbury is a well-meaning but ultimately—for me—fairly surface-level romp through the younger Bloomsbury generation that, through what feels like a misplaced desire to be comprehensive, ends up whisking the reader past nearly everything that makes this particular group of people fascinating even a century later. Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

For each rising generation there’s reason to illuminate again their particular, if fleeting, triumphs. Young men and women fascinated by the promise of freedom of expression and, above all, a space in which they could explore and celebrate queer identities. The book concludes that the Bloomsbury's were the first to have non-conventional relationships, but that simply ignores pioneers such as Edward Carpenter. Above all else, Bloomsbury was a liberating force, as Nino Strachey shows in her sparkling new book. As a straight forward history of the characters that can be said to make up the Bloomsbury set, both young and old, this is a reasonably good book.I had thought it would also be about the group referred to as the Bright Young Things- The Mitfords and Evelyn Waugh , for example. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Pansexuality runs through everything from their discussions to their rowdy parties to the work they produce. Unfortunately, my knowledge and interest in art is so minuscule as to have been detrimental in my understanding of several Bloomsbury figures. With a deft turn of the Bloomsbury kaleidoscope, and an impressive gift for finding treasures in the archives, Nino Strachey reveals colourful new patterns of experiments in living which speak trenchantly to our own cultural moment.