yes or no: Should We Change our Name to the "Bloomsbury Group"?

Virginia Woolf. 1882-1941

Growing up with a father (who's a critic, biographer, scholar, and philosopher) in a large and talented family like Virginia Woolf's lends itself to learning Greek, meeting famous Victorians of the day, and naturally leaning toward intellectualism and writing. But a quick glimpse at any biography of Virginia Woolf (erm.....that's what this blog post is all about: me quick glimpsing) shows that her life wasn't ideal: her mother died in 1895, her half-sister died in childbirth in 1897, her father died of cancer, and her brother died of typhoid in 1906.

(This is not the time or place, but sometime we'll talk about how I prefer a happy, calm life to a writer's life. They might be incompatible....)

After this 11-year span of deaths in the family, Virginia Woolf settled in Bloomsbury--a district in London that would later be the namesake for an intellectual group frequented by some of the great thinkers of the early 20th century. That group--including artists, writers, and critics with names like EM Forster and John Maynard Keynes--quickly made its name for its sharp wit, its frankness, and its intellectual sparkle.

Virginia Woolf's own engaging writing exemplifies those qualities that Bloomsbury held highest. In her essays, Woolf proved a powerful proponent for women, arguing for androgynous appeal in writing. In her reviews, Woolf' showed her masterful sense of criticism. (Woolf published around 500 essays and reviews for contemporary periodicals). In her fiction, Woolf probed consciousness for the truth of human experience. Her style privileges playfulness, experimentation, and spontaneity. Yet her flair for wit and intellectualism in her writing are perhaps off-set by own life's exacting perfectionism and periods of severe depression.

And, if you think like me, the name Virginia Woolf welds itself to stream of consciousness. In her novels, Woolf abandoned the traditional linear narratives for her own style of interior monologues and stream of consciousness narration. One biographer describes Woolf's unique writing as"intensely psychological and interior" and also as "a carefully modulated flow that brought into prose fiction into something of the rhythms of and imagery of lyric poetry." Lovely.

Great reading experience coming our way.

end notes.
(1) we can't call ourselves anything associated with Bloomsbury--far too elitist.
(2) I drew my facts, some phrasing, and that quote from the Norton Anthology of English Literature.