Product Description

Angelica Garnett may truly be called a child of Bloomsbury. Her Aunt was Virginia Woolf, her mother Vanessa Bell, and her father Duncan Grant, though for many years Angelica believed herself, naturally enough, the daughter of Vanessa's husband Clive. Her childhood homes, Charleston in Sussex and Gordon Square in London, were both centres of Bloomsbury activity, and she grew up surrounded by the most talked-about writers and artists of the day - Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, the Stracheys, Maynard Keynes, David Garnett (whom she later married), and many others. But the book is also a record of a young girl's particular struggle to emerge from that extraordinary and intense milieu as a mature and independent woman. With an honesty that is by degrees agonising and uplifting, the author creates a vibrant, poignant picture of her mother, Vanessa Bell, of her own emergent individuality, and of the Bloomsbury era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54587 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent
If you are interested in the Bloomsbury set, this is a fascinating and engrossing book. I relished the whole book and was sad to finish it. It gives an alternative insight into the Bloomsbury set giving a flavour of reality of what outwardly seems an idyllic lifestyle.

Hard feelings obscure vision
I picked up the book because I was curious to learn more about the Bloomsbury people, especially Vanessa Bell. What I got instead was a hurt child's account of how her three parents never were interested enough in her to make her develop self-esteem and spoilt her instead of giving her proper guidance, which they obviously couldn't be bothered to do. This would be okay if Garnett described her childhood and her various relationships with her elders in detail, instead she stays on the surface of her own, often not very clear, emotional reactions, so we never quite learn where exactly her grudge stems from. Also we just don't get enough precise information on what happened when and why. Still, I could extract a few facts new to me.