This is a list of people associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Much about the group is controversial, including its membership: it has been said that "the three words 'the Bloomsbury group' have been so much used as to have become almost unusable".
Group of friends and relatives that became a movement
The Bloomsbury group started as a loose collective of friends and relatives living near Bloomsbury in London. Some of them knew each other from their time as students in Cambridge. Around World War I most of its key members had left the Bloomsbury area, where some of them later returned.
The members of the Bloomsbury Group denied being a group in any formal sense, they however shared common values, among which was a strong belief in the arts.
Core members
The group had ten core members: Clive Bell, art critic Vanessa Bell, post-impressionist painter E. M. Forster, fiction writer Roger Fry, art critic and post-impressionist painter Duncan Grant, post-impressionist painter, who later became a member of the Camden Town Group John Maynard Keynes, economist Desmond MacCarthy, literary journalist Lytton Strachey, biographer Leonard Woolf, essayist and non-fiction writer Virginia Woolf, fiction writer and essayist
Included according to Leonard Woolf
In the 1960s, Leonard Woolf additionally listed the following Bloomsbury Group members: "Old Bloomsbury": Adrian Stephen Karin Stephen Saxon Sydney-Turner Mary (Molly) MacCarthy Later additions: Julian Bell Quentin Bell Angelica Bell David Garnett
Mentioned in various sources as included in the Bloomsbury Group
Various sources include the following: Lady Ottoline Morrell Dora Carrington James Strachey Alix Strachey Lydia Lopokova, Keynes' wife, accepted in the group
Generally not seen as members of the Bloomsbury Group
Died before the group really existed
Thoby Stephen, brother to key members Adrian Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell
Omega Workshops
Roger Fry and other Bloomsbury Group artists such as Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were involved in the Omega Workshops, a business which traded from 1913 to 1919. Other designers and manufacturers at the Workshops were not necessarily members of the Bloomsbury Group.
Ottoline Morrell circle
The Bloomsbury Group only partially identified with Lady Ottoline Morrell, but attended her parties at Garsington Manor. Others present: L. P. Hartley Eardley Knollys Philip Morrell Aldous Huxley and his wife Maria Nys
Hogarth Press
Hogarth Press was the publishing house owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf after they had left the Bloomsbury area in 1917. Staff members and authors published by that company were not necessarily part of the Bloomsbury Group. The following are generally not seen as part of the Bloomsbury Group: Published by Hogarth Press: T. S. Eliot Katherine Mansfield Vita Sackville-West, "Hogarth Press's best-selling author" Julia Strachey, Lytton Stratchey's niece Hogarth Press personnel: John Lehmann, later starting his own publishing company
LGBT extended groups
The Bloomsbury Group plays a prominent role in the LGBT history of its day. While still in the Bloomsbury area, LGBT activity was all very much in a single group (e.g. Duncan Grant, a homosexual with bisexual leanings, having affairs with Maynard Keynes, James Strachey, Adrian Stephen, David Garnett and straight Vanessa Bell). Names of LGBT people outside the Bloomsbury Group strictly speaking include: Mary Garman Nina Hamnett Jane Ellen Harrison Rupert Brooke Arthur Hobhouse
Later the groups differentiated. Keynes married Lopokova, and no longer belonged to any of the LGBT groups. Other groups more or less split according to the location of the members: Lady Ottoline Morrell provided housing for Aldous Huxley at Garsington where he was married to Maria Nys after the war. Also Duncan Grant and David Garnett had to work on the land as conscientious objectors during World War I. They started living with Vanessa Bell (also her son Julian) in Charleston Farmhouse: Francis Birrell started a bookshop together with David Garnett later on.
Also during the First World War, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington moved to Tidmarsh Mill House, Berkshire. Later (in a ménage à trois with straight Ralph Partridge) they moved to Ham Spray House, Wiltshire. Roger Senhouse was Lytton Strachey's last lover. E. M. Forster spent his time as conscientious objector in Egypt, and remained there some time after the First World War. When returning to England his circle of LGBT friends and acquaintances included: W. J. H. Sprott J. R. Ackerley Christopher Isherwood Siegfried Sassoon Forrest Reid Benjamin Britten