On or about December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World

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, Cezanne, 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.)