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The Bloomsbury Group has been characterised as a liberal, pacifist, and at times libertine, intellectual enclave of Cambridge-based privilege. The Cambridge men of the group (Bell, Forster, Fry, Keynes, Strachey, Sydney-Turner) were members of the elite and secret society of Cambridge Apostles. aesthetic understanding, and broader philosophy, were in part shaped by, and at first primarily interpreted in terms of, (male) Bloomsbury's domin..
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cambridge
literary-criticism
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Jane Goldman |
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The 1950s and 1960s: philosophy, psychology, myth There was considerable critical interest in Woolf 's life and work in this period, fuelled by the publication of selected extracts from her diaries, in A Writer's Diary (1953), and in part by J. K. Johnstone's The Bloomsbury Group (1954). The main critical impetus was to establish a sense of a unifying aesthetic mode in Woolf 's writing, and in her works as a whole, whether through philosoph..
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Jane Goldman |
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By the close of the nineteenth century her studies with her father were being supplemented by tuition in the classics from Dr Warr of King's College, Kensington, and from Clara Pater, sister of the English essayist and critic Walter Pater (1839-94). Woolf was very fond of Clara and an exchange between them later became the basis for her short story 'Moments of Being: Slater's Pins Have No Points' (1928). Thoby boarded at Clifton College, Br..
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Jane Goldman |
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In 1922 Woolf met the writer Vita Sackville-West, who was to join Vanessa Bell and Leonard Woolf as the most significant people in her life.
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Jane Goldman |
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Leonard Woolf was two years older than Virginia, whom he had first met in 1901 in the rooms of her brother Thoby at Cambridge. He went from St Paul's School to Trinity College on a scholarship in 1899 and was the first Jew to be elected to the Cambridge Apostles. His father Sidney Woolf (1844-92) was a barrister who died prematurely, leaving his widow, Marie, with the care of their ten children. After Cambridge, Leonard reluctantly entered ..
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Jane Goldman |
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Leonard and Virginia married in August 1912. Virginia was 30. Soon after her marriage she suVered another breakdown and her mental health declined sporadically over the following year, culminating in a suicide attempt in September 1913. They were advised against having children because of Virginia's recurring depressive illness, a cause of some regret to her, and a point of much heated debate among her later biographers.
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Jane Goldman |
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In January 1912 Leonard proposed marriage. She was unable to answer directly and he pressed further in a passionate letter: 'It isn't, really it isnt, merely because you are so beautiful - though of course that is a large reason & so it should be - that I love you: it is your mind & your character - I have never known anyone like you in that - wont you believe me?
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Jane Goldman |
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There are numerous biographies of Woolf. Biography has been highly influential in shaping the reception ofWoolf 's work, and her life has been as much debated as her writing. I would recommend the following three which represent three different biographical contexts and a range of positions on Woolf 's life: Quentin Bell's Virginia Woolf: A Biography (1972), Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf (1996), and Julia Briggs's Virginia Woolf: An Inner L..
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Jane Goldman |