The Bloomsbury Reform: a Shift in Literary and Aesthetic Perspective

¿Old Bloomsbury still survives. If you seek proof¿ look around¿ ¿ Virginia Woolf. The myth of Bloomsbury can be traced back to the early twentieth century, and one cannot claim that its influence has ever completely perished. Bloomsbury was a group of young men and women who, through their individual capacities and joint efforts, worked to reform the British culture which they felt had become rather moribund. The artists within the group introduced art of a more abstract nature, and their endeavours were unsurprisingly tested by harsh criticism. Concomitantly, the writers of the group, mainly Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, were facing their own ordeals as they gallantly attempted to alter the even more hostile domains of biography and fiction. The Bloomsbury legacy survives till this very day, for not only have we inherited their unparalleled literature and art, their unique theories, and their many letters and diaries, but we are, to some extent, heirs to a freer lifestyle that Bloomsbury itself promoted.