The Bloomsbury Group as Creative Community

Abstract

The Bloomsbury group was a multidisciplinary association of friends who came together early in the twentieth century. It contained John Maynard Keynes and others who had an interest in economic questions, including the art critic Roger Fry, the novelists Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, and the man of letters Leonard Woolf. The group had little formal organization but cooperated in various ways and resembled in some respects a pioneering think tank. They rejoiced in intellectual and artistic radicalism. They had fans and critics in Britain and elsewhere. They collaborated through Fry's Omega Workshops, the Woolfs' Hogarth Press, Keynes's magazine the Nation, and the Contemporary Art Society. They rejected the teachings of Jeremy Bentham and looked for enlightenment to modern psychology and biography. In their search for “civilization” they discussed how to achieve peace and economic progress through a new world order, how to sustain the arts in an advanced market economy, how to improve the position of women and minorities, and how to protect the environment. They were influenced by many thinkers including the American institutionalists.