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How a generation of bold, sexually liberated and gender transgressive Bright Young Things in the 1920s and 30s rejuvenated the ageing Bloomsbury set, giving them a new and relevant voice.
In the 1920s a new generation stepped forward to invigorate the Bloomsbury Group -- creative young people who tantalised the original 'Bloomsberries' with their captivating looks and provocative ideas.
Young Bloomsbury introduces us to an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters, including novelist and music critic Eddy Sackville-West, 'who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet'; sculptor Stephen Tomlin; and writer Julia Strachey. Talented and productive, these larger-than-life figures had high-achieving professional lives and extremely complicated emotional lives.
Bloomsbury had always celebrated sexual equality and freedom in private, but by the 1920s self-expression was becoming more public, with cross-dressing Young Bloomsbury giving Old Bloomsbury a new voice in a chosen family of a shared rebellion against pre-war conventions.
Author: Nino Strachey
Paperback, Orig. Published May 2022, This Edition Publ. May 2023, 335 pages
"A lively account of a group of bright young things in the 1920s. A hundred years ahead of their time, these creative souls were pushing the boundaries of gender identity and sexual expression, and - surprisingly - finding acceptance among their friends and families." ― Robert Sackville-West, author of The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
"Young Bloomsbury just BRIMS with the same kind of sexy vitality embodied by the characters Nino Strachey describes in such effervescent detail. Just when you might have wondered if there could possibly be room for a new and revealing study of a group of lives which have been so meticulously and extensively documented, Nino's exhilarating lens offers an entirely original and thrilling focus. As scepticism, admiration, envy, and confusion ebb and flow between one chattering, seductive, thinking, inspiring generation and another, this is Gatsby made real." ― Juliet Nicolson