Introduction Virginia Woolf I The Dreadnought Hoax Virginia Woolf II Artists and Others E. M. Forster Quakes in British Society On the Way to Post-Impressionism The Exhibition Bloomsbury Emergent Notes Acknowledgments Index
This is a work of scholarship that highlights the very beginnings of a group of highly individual, talented and far-sighted people...It is clear, succinct without convolutions and entertaining. -- Adam An-tAnthair-Siorai, Icarus (British Mensa) Did England stagger into modernity in 1910? Few better to consider the question than Peter Stansky, a veteran connoisseur of the group. -- Noel Annan
Peter Stansky is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University; author, among other works, of Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts; and coauthor of Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War.
Peter Stansky makes a strong case for 1910 as a galvanizing year in
which this promising but largely unknown group of friends
established a decisive public identity. With a wealth of detail,
Stansky fleshes out what he considers the crucial events of their
year—the Dreadnought Hoax, the legendary First Post-Impressionist
Exhibition and the appearance of E. M. Forster’s next-to-last
novel, Howards End… Although On or About 1910 covers a period of
Bloomsbury that many other writers have explored, Stansky skips the
usual panoply of anecdotes and offers instead a genuine history,
rich in political and social contexts for what might otherwise seem
merely youthful high spirits and lukewarm middle-class rebellion.
He makes it clear how Bloomsbury could subvert Edwardian
materialism from a position of financial security and youthful
family connections… With considerable skill, Stansky [also] places
Bloomsbury’s artistic and domestic rebellions against the backdrop
of the women’s suffrage movement, military buildup and the struggle
to limit the power of the House of Lords.
*San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle*
Ably and diversely, [Stansky] shows that 1910 marked as distinct a
turning point in Bloomsbury lives as it did in a country lit by
Halley’s comet and Strauss’s ‘Elektra’… Peter Stansky’s book is a
useful reminder that, for all their folly, members of the
Bloomsbury group have serious claims upon posterity. Addictively,
infuriatingly so.
*Boston Globe*
The main purpose of this book is at once to introduce the main
figures—E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant,
Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes, as well as Woolf
herself—while setting them, and the general movement of literature
and art, in a detailed historical context… The association of
Forster’s growing acceptance of his homosexuality with the
emergence of more sensuous and violent operas, a new sense of
sexual liberation in literature and the arts, along with the
reinstatement of Oscar Wilde as a cultural reference, all in that
month of December 1910, makes for stimulating reading.
*The Independent on Sunday*
This excellent book gives a gossipy glimpse of England when, in
1910, it tottered belatedly into the twentieth century… Curious
times, but then, Bloomsbury was a curious world whose aesthetes
dipped more readily into each others’ bodies than their fledgling
quills to ink.
*Time Out [UK]*
This is a work of scholarship that highlights the very beginnings
of a group of highly individual, talented and far-sighted people…
It is clear, succinct without convolutions and entertaining.
*Icarus [British Mensa]*
Woolf’s much-quoted observation that ‘on or about December 1910
human character changed’ provides the organizing principle of this
imaginative cultural study. Stansky charts the complex personal
relations of early Bloomsbury… [P]atterns do emerge that give point
to Woolf’s sound bite about 1910 and should engage the general
reader, reward advanced students, and enlighten even
dyed-in-the-Woolf scholars.
*Choice*
[Stansky] brings together the many strands of personal, literary,
social, and artistic history that were to form the core of the
modernist movement. Although much of this information can be
gleaned from the individual biographies, this intense focus on a
single, eventful year, rather than on the personalities, is quite
successful. Stansky is able to give a vivid and immediate
understanding of an era important to students of 20th-century
culture.
*Library Journal*
Did England stagger into modernity in 1910? Few better to consider
the question than Peter Stansky, a veteran connoisseur of the
group.
*Noel Annan*
Peter Stansky makes a strong case for 1910 as a galvanizing year in
which this promising but largely unknown group of friends
established a decisive public identity. With a wealth of detail,
Stansky fleshes out what he considers the crucial events of their
year--the Dreadnought Hoax, the legendary First Post-Impressionist
Exhibition and the appearance of E.M. Forster's next-to-last novel,
'Howards End'...Although 'On or About 1910' covers a period of
Bloomsbury that many other writers have explored, Stansky skips the
usual panoply of anecdotes and offers instead a genuine history,
rich in political and social contexts for what might otherwise seem
merely youthful high spirits and lukewarm middle-class rebellion.
He makes it clear how Bloomsbury could subvert Edwardian
materialism from a position of financial security and youthful
family connections...With considerable skill, Stansky [also] places
Bloomsbury's artistic and domestic rebellions against the backdrop
of the women's suffrage movement, military buildup and the struggle
to limit the power of the House of Lords. -- Regina Marler * San
Francisco Examiner & Chronicle *
The main purpose of this book is at once to introduce the main
figures--E M Forster, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant,
Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes, as well as Woolf
herself--while setting them, and the general movement of literature
and art, in a detailed historical context...The association of
Forster's growing acceptance of his homosexuality with the
emergence of more sensuous and violent operas, a new sense of
sexual liberation in literature and the arts, along with the
reinstatement of Oscar Wilde as a cultural reference, all in that
month of December 1910, makes for stimulating reading. -- John R.
Bradley * Independent on Sunday *
Ably and diversely, [Stansky] shows that 1910 marked as distinct a
turning point in Bloomsbury lives as it did in a country lit by
Halley's comet and Strauss's 'Elektra'...Peter Stansky's book is a
useful reminder that, for all their folly, members of the
Bloomsbury group have serious claims upon posterity. Addictively,
infuriatingly so. -- Christopher Hawtree * Boston Globe *
This excellent book gives a gossipy glimpse of England when, in
1910, it tottered belatedly into the twentieth century...Curious
times, but then, Bloomsbury was a curious world whose aesthetes
dipped more readily into each others' bodies than their fledgling
quills to ink. -- Brian Davis * Time Out [UK *
[Stansky] brings together the many strands of personal, literary,
social, and artistic history that were to form the core of the
modernist movement. Although much of this information can be
gleaned from the individual biographies, this intense focus on a
single, eventful year, rather than on the personalities, is quite
successful. Stansky is able to give a vivid and immediate
understanding of an era important to students of 20th-century
culture. -- Library Journal
This is a work of scholarship that highlights the very beginnings
of a group of highly individual, talented and far-sighted
people...It is clear, succinct without convolutions and
entertaining. -- Adam An-tAnthair-Siorai, Icarus (British
Mensa)
Did England stagger into modernity in 1910? Few better to consider
the question than Peter Stansky, a veteran connoisseur of the
group. -- Noel Annan
Woolf's much-quoted observation that 'on or about December 1910
human character changed' provides the organizing principle of this
imaginative cultural study. Stansky charts the complex personal
relations of early Bloomsbury...[P]atterns do emerge that give
point to Woolf's sound bite about 1910 and should engage the
general reader, reward advanced students, and enlighten even
dyed-in-the-Woolf scholars. * Choice *
Stansky's title derives from a retrospective remark in Virginia Woolf's 1924 essay "Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown" that "on or about December 1910 human character changed." Certainly during that time, Bloomsbury was coalescing and defining itself. Woolf was at work on her first novel, The Voyage Out (eventually published in 1915) and E.M. Forster published Howard's End; others in the group were busily establishing their reputations. The year 1910 culminated in a celebrated and controversial London exhibition, "Manet and the Post-Impressionists," which introduced modern European art to Britain. Curated by Roger Fry, it included a generous collection of paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. Woolf, naturally, is seen as a central figure in the nascent Bloomsbury group, but this book is peopled with many others both central and peripheral, who by their unconventional attitudes and behavior challenged tradition and authority. Stanford history professor Stansky (Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War) discusses not only personal relationships but also involvement in and reaction to social change. The general election of 1910, the death of King Edward VII in May, the publication of the famed 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the ongoing woman's suffrage movement are all discussed, as is the so-called Dreadnought Hoax, in which Woolf and others, posing as visiting Abyssinian princes, were received abroad the battleship Dreadnought and caused the British government some embarrassment. The wealth of material here, much of it already familiar, doesn't lend itself to linear development and overflows the confines indicated by the title, but the book will be of keen interest to Bloomsburyians. Photos. (Oct.)
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