Young Bloomsbury: The Generation That Redefined Love, Freedom, and Self-Expression in 1920s England

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And now my TBR list has a slew of new authors: some previously unknown, some I've dabbled in but must now commit to reading and some I know only by literary reputation. Always life will be worth living by those who find in it things which make them feel to the limit of their capacity”

Unfortunately, my knowledge and interest in art is so minuscule as to have been detrimental in my understanding of several Bloomsbury figures. I shall educate myself forthwith. The book concludes that the Bloomsbury's were the first to have non-conventional relationships, but that simply ignores pioneers such as Edward Carpenter. (Lived openly with George Merrill for 30 years and was very influential).Maybe there’s much less of a book without it, but the chapters go from conquest to conquest. This will perhaps excite some, bother others, and bring on indifference in still others. At the same time, there’s an argument that what Strachey reports has useful significance about the present. Indeed, while reading Young Bloomsbury I found myself wishing those on the hunt to ruin existing lives for how some acted in the past would read Strachey’s book. To do so would be to see that those who were part of “Young Bloomsbury” were seemingly all sexual predators. Keynes, whom Strachey describes as “one of the wealthier hosts in Bloomsbury,” “used his position” to “befriend and seduce undergraduates.” It all reads as normal until we see individuals in the here and now losing their careers for doing in the past what so many did. One guesses that Keynes’s predatory ways with younger males was an open secret. Right or wrong, at the time it was seemingly viewed as normal within this elite world. And it’s something to think about as we apply present-day morals to what happened in the past. Eventually what George Will describes as “presentism” will get us all. Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author. All of which speaks to a level of seriousness in the notables featured in Young Bloomsbury that the book perhaps did not vivify. Strachey makes it more than plain to readers that the Bloomsbury atmosphere was such that you could “say what you liked about sex, art or religion,” and the impression is given of people who are maybe flighty. Which didn’t read right. Even if all of “Young Bloomsbury” hadn’t seen the war, all of this crowd surely knew people very well who had. Men or women regardless of age had seen enormous trouble. How could they not have? It’s a way of suggesting that these were individuals who had much more than “sex, art or religion” on their minds. What was it? And let’s not answer with they were merely trying to forget. What’s awful can’t be forgotten, so what was on their minds when they weren’t “buggering” everything within eyesight? As does your reviewer’s assertion that ideologically perfect as libertarianism is, it has elitist, class privileged qualities. Strachey’s book seems to support this view in that the crowd she writes about reads as very libertarian, not to mention that it succeeded by virtue of it “reaching an audience eager to challenge traditional conventions.” The “Bloomsberries” were very much of the belief that “every person had the right to live and love in the way they chose.” Ok, so how to say this? Libertarianism of the small l variety is correct, but it also appeals to an elite that not only believes in freedom to live and let live, but that also can live and let live. You walk in an alley sheltered and comely … your hedges are grown so tall that you know nothing of the sun, save that he falls sometimes perpendicular on your vanity and warms your self-complacency at noon.”

O ne comes away slightly breathless with the sense of having left an excellent party full of wit and intrigue’ TLS Again, none of this is meant as criticism of these people. As a believer once again that libertarianism is the perfect ideology for it being all about freedom to choose, it’s hard not to be drawn to historical figures whose motto was there “was nothing one could not say, nothing that one could not do.” This is how it should be. It’s just that it seems easier to be as one should be when privileged.Was the book unputdownable? That can’t be said, though it may well be unputdownable for those who know the world about which Strachey writes. The chapters were very short, which was great. The problem with the chapters for some will be that they read as gossipy streams of consciousness, and because they do, they don’t support Strachey’s contention that the “collective value” of the individuals she writes about “has been consistently underplayed.” The response here is that Strachey perhaps has a point, that these people were ahead of their time in their view that “every person had the right to live and love in the way they chose,” so why not focus more on their deep belief in freedom over the endless mentions of how Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, Stephen Tennant, et al personified polyamorous?