3 May 2010

The Bloomsbury Group at Gordon Square, Bloomsbury: Literary London #14

The plaque at 50 Gordon Square states 'HERE AND IN NEIGBOURING HOUSES DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY THERE LIVED SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP INCLUDING VIRGINIA WOOLF CLIVE BELL AND THE STRACHEYS'.

Included in the top photo is 51 Gordon Square: 'Lytton Strachey 1880-1932 Critic and Biographer lived here'. Here, Strachey wrote Queen Victoria (1921), his follow-up to the ground-breaking Eminent Victorians (1918).

46 Gordon Square. 'John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946 Economist lived here 1916-1946'. Oddly, there is no plaque commemorating the fact that Virginia Woolf (then still Stephens) lived here from 1904-06, nor, perhaps even more surprising, that this is in effect the birthplace of the Bloomsbury Group. Virginia moved here with her sister Vanessa and her brothers Adrian and Thoby, who was to die in Greece in 1906.

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