Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa and Carrington

by Mary Ann Caws

Overview

Originally published in 1990, Women of Bloomsbury takes a fresh look at the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, and Dora Carrington. Connected by more than bonds of friendship and artistic endeavour, the three women faced similar struggles. Juxtaposing their personal lives and their work, Mary Ann Caws shows us with feeling and clarity the pain women suffer in being artists and in finding – or creating – their sense of self. Relying on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as familiar texts, Caws give us a portrait of the female self in the act of creation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351119764
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/21/2018
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: Virginia Woolf , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	254
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Mary Ann Caws

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Cast of Characters Abbreviations 1. Personal Criticism: A Matter of Choice 2. These Working Women 3. Virginia 4. Together, with Virginia 5. Vanessa 6. Carrington 7. How We See, How We Are Notes Appendix 1: Reading Vanessa Appendix 2: Reading Carrington Restrained Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

As an advocate of personal criticism and ``life-telling''--``a willing, knowledgeable, outspoken involvement'' in a complex situation--City University of New York professor Caws here intensely projects herself into the loves, lives and works of one well-known writer (Virginia Woolf) and two artists (Vanessa Bell and Dora Carrington) who gave up the love of ``normal'' men on behalf of an all-encompassing love for homosexual men (Duncan Grant and Lytton Strachey). Unfortunately, this sympathetic, partisan approach, the author's access to hitherto unpublished sources and her comparisons of these women's lives and achievements are compromised by her long, turgid sentences and polemics. Illustrations. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This essay in ``personal criticism'' attempts to ``understand and evaluate the temperaments'' of three women artists associated with Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf, her sister the painter Vanessa Bell, and the less-well-known painter Dora Carrington. Caws's strongly feminist perspective explores the ways these complex women--two bisexuals, two women living with gay men, two suicides--struggled to define their sense of self. The lives of Woolf, Bell, and Carrington point the author toward such issues as ``ambivalence, creation, and pain.'' Caws analyzes the lives and works (fiction, paintings, diaries, letters) by way of a larger ``personal advocacy of freedom and unjudgmental evaluation.'' The ideal reader of this book is a card-carrying member of the sisterhood who somehow hasn't tired of Bloomsbury. The personal dimension (expressed in the subtitle) is a mixed blessing, but this is a thoughtful, often intriguing study.-- Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Library Journal

A look at the lives of three Bloomsbury women--a great writer (Virginia Woolf), Virginia's sister and talented painter (Vanessa Bell), and an unsuccessful, reclusive artist (Dora Carrington)--that is also an intimate look at friendship, artistic endeavor, and women's search for selfhood. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews