Other than Virginia Woolf, I can’t think of a central figure in The Bloomsbury Group who achieved real greatness. Many of those whose lives touched the fringes of the Group, T.S. Eliot, for example, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Maynard Keynes, grew into painters, poets, philosophers, and economists of huge distinction and global reputation, but Bloomsbury’s core members were mostly minor figures.

Yet the Group’s hold on the popular imagination continues to be huge, far greater than the work of its individual members merits.  The likes of Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and Vita Sackville West are known by a large audience, but I wonder how many now ever read their books or look at their paintings. To explain the persistent power and appeal of Bloomsbury, you have to look beyond the work and focus on a word that would have meant nothing to Bloomsbury: lifestyle. The group’s contempt for suffocating social mores, its embrace of sexual freedom and equality, and its elevation of artistic effort seem perennially avant-garde, attracting new followers in every generation, regardless of the accomplishments of Bloomsbury’s leaders.

Dora Carrington is for many a standard bearer of the code by which Bloomsbury lived.  She was a minor painter, though she has loyal admirers and her reputation has grown over the years. A handful of her portraits (the best known of which is of Lytton Strachey – see below) can be found in prominent galleries and collections.  Her significance for those who admire her lies in the independence of her spirit and her determination to live on her own terms as both an artist and a woman.

Those qualities shine through this wonderful collection of letters.  Carrington’s life wasn’t a conventionally happy one.  Her work got little recognition beyond Bloomsbury and her love for Strachey, a gay man, brought little real fulfillment for her.  Her suicide at the age of 38, only two months after his death, has come to define her in the eyes of many as a tragic figure.

Anne Chisholm has done an outstanding job editing the letters of this strange, complex, and uncompromising artist.  At their center stands her besotted and passionate commitment to Strachey, but there are also some lovely vignettes of Bloomsbury’s key figures, including Virginia Woolf and Mark Gertler, among others.  This isn’t a book to be read cover-to-cover, but something in which to dip occasionally to remind oneself of the extraordinary ideals of Bloomsbury and the fierce dedication of those who lived by them.