Bloomsbury Group Virginia Woolf’s Friends and Lovers Who Were they? Most of them were in some way associated with the university of Cambridge in England in the early 1900’s they were artists, writers, economists, intellectuals, and art critics that often met for discussion on those matters and other ideas of their time. Time and Place The name Bloomsbury simply comes from the area of London which they occupied during that time of 19001930’s for which they were in their prime. Sex A La Carte The romantic record of the group's members is noteworthy, because they demonstrated a sexual freedom that was ahead of their time. For Example, Virginia Woolf had a least one romantic liaison with a woman in the group, Vita Sackville-West and Clive Bell, married to her sister, Vanessa had a mistress, Mary Hutchins. Sex A La Carte Don’t feel sorry for Vanessa Stephen (Woolf’s sister). The great love of her life was Duncan Grant who while sexually intimate with her, preferred men, including her brother, Aidan. In fact, they even shared one once. Duncan and Vanessa both had the same man who lived them David “Bunny” Garnett for at least a year during World War one. Sex A La Carte While Triangular relationships with a gay twist were common within the Bloomsbury circle. Strachey was gay, but in the early days of Bloomsbury, he proposed marriage to Virginia Stephen (Woolf). In the 1920s, he lived in platonic bliss with surrealist painter Dora Carrington. Sex A La Carte When they both fell in love with the same man, Carrington married the object of their mutual desire, and the three set up housekeeping together. The cross-dressing Carrington had affairs with women, confiding to a friend that she had "more ecstasy" with female lovers than with men "and no shame." However, It Has A Serious Side Too This group was tired of the not only the sexuality expressed by the Victorians, but also the political, social, intellectual and artistic conventions of that era and they wanted to form new ways of thinking and being that would make for a new movement. However, It Has A Serious Side Too These were some of the best minds in Europe. Well read, brilliant and well traveled. They objected the war in Europe, they envisioned a peaceful society full of artistic and social freedoms. However, It Has A Serious Side Too They experimented with literary techniques in ways that were not being done and in a good deal of ways freed literature from its’ restraints and allowed it go in new and important directions making modern fiction, poetry and non fiction possible. They did the same for art as well.