Not in their darkest nightmares could Bloomsbury's contemporary detractors have imagined that Charleston Farmhouse, where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant once lived and painted, would eventually attract some 15,000 visitors each year, or that a high-profile film, Carrington, would be based on Lytton Strachey's largely platonic love affair with an obscure artist on the fringes of the hallowed Group. Bloomsbury Pie examines the persistent allure of Bloomsbury - a fascination driven by nostalgia, adoration, and antipathy - and tracks the resurgence of interest in the Group, from a handful of biographies in the 1960s through the feminist discovery of Virginia Woolf in the 1970s and the enshrinement of the Bloomsberries as cultural icons in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on a wealth of material generated by this revival, Regina Marler chronicles the story of the Bloomsbury boom - its scholars, collectors, and fanatics - and explores the industry it has spawned among writers, publishers, and art dealers. In the process she creates an impressive social history of a tenacious and unwieldy cultural phenomenon.'  
Price: 12.75 USD