BOOK NEWS: An expansive and multifaceted account of the Bloomsbury Group

A History of the Bloomsbury Group 

Edited by Derek Ryan

Cambridge UP, 2025

ISBN: 9781009423663

https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/history-bloomsbury-group

A History of the Bloomsbury Group ranges more widely across the Bloomsbury group's interdisciplinary activities and international networks than any previous volume. From innovations in the literary and visual arts to interventions in politics and economic policy, core members including Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and John Maynard Keynes are explored in relation to a diverse cast of lesser-studied figures to offer an expansive and multifaceted account of the group's achievements and influence. Leading international scholars provide authoritative and accessible commentaries on a variety of topics under the broad headings of 'Aesthetic Bloomsbury,' 'Global Bloomsbury,' 'Intimate Bloomsbury,' and 'Public Bloomsbury.' Whether addressing established narratives or pushing into new critical terrain, the book demonstrates that, more than a century on from its formation, the Bloomsbury group remains an active and dynamic force in the key critical debates of today.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Shows how relevant the Bloomsbury group remains for the study of modernism and contemporary culture
• Demonstrates how serious engagement with the Bloomsbury group involves analysis of literature, the visual arts, economics, global politics, gender and queer studies, and more
• Offers a range of historically contextualized readings by experts in the field

Contents

1. The Bloomsbury friction by Derek Ryan

Part I. Aesthetic Bloomsbury:

2. The Bloomsbury novel by Jesse Matz

3. Bloomsbury's shorter fiction by Bryony Randall

4. Bloomsbury and the new biography by Todd Avery

5. Post-impressionism and the Bloomsbury brand by Wendy Hitchmough

6. Bloomsbury and music by Tsung-Han Tsai

7. Poetry in, or around, Bloomsbury by Sara Sullam

Part II. Global Bloomsbury:

8. Bloomsbury, South Asia, and empire by Susheila Nasta and Florian Stadtler

9. Bloomsbury and China by Patricia Laurence

10. Bloomsbury and the USA by Mark Hussey

11. Bloomsbury and Russomania by Rebecca Beasley

12. Cross-channel diplomacy and postwar Bloomsbury by Claire Davison

13. Late Bloomsbury's dialectic of enlightenment by Christine Froula

Part III. Intimate Bloomsbury:

14. Bloomsbury, friendship, and love by Jesse Wolfe

15. Bloomsbury's gender politics by Pamela Caughie

16. Bloomsbury, nudity, and race by Jane Garrity

17. Bloomsbury and psychoanalysis by Gabrielle McIntyre

18. Bloomsbury life writing by Drew Patrick Shannon

Part IV. Public Bloomsbury:

19. Bloomsbury and economics by Paul Crosthwaite

20. Bloomsbury and the meanings of labor by Morag Shiach

21. The Bloomsbury bookshop by Derek Ryan

22. Bloomsbury, education, and meritocracy by Natasha Periyan

23. Bloomsbury and science by Michael H. Whitworth

24. Bloomsbury afterlives by Monica Latham

Derek Ryan is a senior lecturer in modern literature at the University of Kent. His previous books include Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature (2022), and the co-edited volumes Cross-Channel Modernisms (2020) and The Handbook to the Bloomsbury Group (2018). He is editor of Edinburgh University Press's book series Virginia Woolf – Variations.

Book News: Animals in the writings of the Bloomsbury group

 Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature

BY DEREK RYAN

Cambridge UP, 2022

ISBN: 9781009182973

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/bloomsbury-beasts-and-british-modernist-literature

Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature reveals how the Bloomsbury group's fascination with beasts – from pests to pets, tiny insects to big game – became an integral part of their critique of modernity and conceptualization of more-than-human worlds. Through a series of close readings, it argues that for Leonard Woolf, David Garnett, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, profound shifts in interspecies relations were intimately connected to questions of imperialism, race, gender, sexuality and technology. Whether in their hunting narratives, zoo fictions, canine biographies or (un)entomological aesthetics, these writers repeatedly test the boundaries between, and imagine transformations of the human and nonhuman by insisting that we attend to the material contexts in which they meet. In demonstrating this, the book enriches our understanding of British modernism while intervening in debates on the cultural significance of animality from the turn of the twentieth century to the Second World War.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Offers sustained attention on the significance of animals in literary modernism's engagement with zoos, hunting, pets and insects, showing readers how literary animal studies and modernist studies can form a mutually enriching dialogue
• Reassesses the Bloomsbury group's approach to questions of colonialism, race, gender, sexuality and technology through their engagement with human-animal relations
• Provides original close readings informed by archival documents, newspapers, draft manuscripts, literary intertexts, zoological studies, natural history and animal theory

Derek Ryan is senior lecturer in modernist literature at the University of Kent. His previous publications include Animal Theory: A Critical Introduction (2015) and the co-edited volumes The Handbook to the Bloomsbury Group (2018) and Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern (2019).