cover image Carrington: A Life

Carrington: A Life

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. W. W. Norton & Company, $24.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-393-02698-6

Gerzina's biography--the first to consider Carrington at length--is an engrossing and well-researched account of the British painter and her era. Carrington was 17 in 1910 when she left her home in provincial Bedford to study in London and, a few years later, she began a longstanding association with the Bloomsbury group. Though seemingly a free spirit, she was fundamentally asexual, making seductive overtures to men yet refusing to make love with them; she clung to these platonic relationships throughout her short life. In her 30s, she engaged in two lesbian love affairs but committed herself emotionally to homosexual Lytton Strachey, living with him from 1916 onward. When the author died of cancer in 1932, she committed suicide. Gerzina, who teaches at Skidmore College, offers a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the Bloomsburyans. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)