Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians is a portrait of England's artistic community in the first half of the twentieth century, engaged in a grand experiment.
Subversive, eccentric and flamboyant - the Bohemians ate garlic and didn't always wash; they painted and danced and didn't care what people thought. They sent their children to co-ed schools; explored homosexuality and Free Love. They were often drunk, broke and hungry but they were rebels.
In this fascinating book Virginia Nicholson examines the way the Bohemians refashioned the way we live our lives.
'Interesting, gorgeous, wonderful.... this book displays the best of bohemia itself - playful, dazzling, original' Julie Burchill, Spectator
'Racy, vivacious, warm-hearted. Offers an illuminating and well-researched portrait of life among the artists, a century ago' TLS
Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She has worked as a documentary researcher for BBC Television and her first book, Charleston - A Bloomsbury House and Garden (written in collaboration with her father, Quentin Bell), was an account of the Sussex home of her grandmother, the painter Vanessa Bell. Her second book, Among the Bohemians- Experiments in Living 1900-1939, was published by Penguin in 2002. She lives in Sussex.
%%%Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians is a portrait of England's artistic community in the first half of the twentieth century, engaged in a grand experiment.
Subversive, eccentric and flamboyant - the Bohemians ate garlic and didn't always wash; they painted and danced and didn't care what people thought. They sent their children to co-ed schools; explored homosexuality and Free Love. They were often drunk, broke and hungry but they were rebels.
In this fascinating book Virginia Nicholson examines the way the Bohemians refashioned the way we live our lives.
'Interesting, gorgeous, wonderful.... this book displays the best of bohemia itself - playful, dazzling, original' Julie Burchill, Spectator
'Racy, vivacious, warm-hearted. Offers an illuminating and well-researched portrait of life among the artists, a century ago' TLS
Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She has worked as a documentary researcher for BBC Television and her first book, Charleston - A Bloomsbury House and Garden (written in collaboration with her father, Quentin Bell), was an account of the Sussex home of her grandmother, the painter Vanessa Bell. Her second book, Among the Bohemians- Experiments in Living 1900-1939, was published by Penguin in 2002. She lives in Sussex.
Industry Reviews
Virginia Nicholson is perhaps uniquely well placed to write about the Bohemian movement of the early 20th century, of which the Bloomsbury Group was a key part: she is the daughter of the writer and artist Quentin Bell, himself the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. However, part of the charm of this eminently informed and readable account is that Nicholson does not seek to use her family connections to sell a rehashed litany of who-was-sleeping-with-whom Bloomsbury gossip, but has instead chosen to describe in minute domestic detail exactly what it meant to live as one of these free spirits in the middle of drab, joyless Edwardian Britain. She does not seek to explain the literary influences or grand passions that shaped the work and lives of these beautiful peacocks - Dylan Thomas, Katherine Mansfield, Ottoline Morrell, Robert Graves, Lytton Strachey, Eric Gill, Augustus John - but concentrates her attention on how they dressed their children; what underwear they wore; how they learned to cook; what it was like for a middle-class woman brought up with servants to have to empty the family's chamber pots. Beatrice Campbell's account of Katherine Mansfield's attempts to wash the dishes after cooking a leg of mutton - 'We had very little hot water and no washing powder, and the grease was in thick layers over everything.... I tried to make a joke of our predicament, but Katherine was beyond jokes; she started to weep ceaselessly and hopelessly' - says as much about the life of a woman writer of her time as any biography of Mansfield ever could. Similarly, the descriptions of the new culinary experiences of these adventurous creatures, garlic and herb-laden dishes with fresh fish and vegetables, contrast so tellingly with the boring, tasteless brown slop served in 'respectable' households that the author is able to draw a wonderful pen-picture of the excitement and interest these trail-blazers generated. Nicholson's breezy, entertaining style enhances, rather than detracts from this rigorously researched and annotated history: a thoroughly enjoyable read. (Kirkus UK)
