Bloomsbury Influences

Book excerpt: “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.” —T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, 1921 Bloomsbury Influences is an interdisciplinary essay collection developed from papers given at Bath Spa University’s Bloomsbury Adaptations Conference. The volume explores the ways that 20th and 21st century art, drama, fiction and philosophy have been influenced and inspired by the work of the Bloomsbury Group and their London milieu. By comparing and contrasting the artistic, philosophical and literary works of the Bloomsbury Group with later artists, writers and thinkers, such as the Singh Twins, Harold Bloom, C. K. Stead, Jeanette Winterson and Ali Smith, amongst many others, each essay examines how, in T. S. Eliot’s words, the past has been “altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past”.