As the nephew of Virginia Woolf, Quentin Bell enjoyed an initimacy with his subject granted to few biographers. Originally published in two volumes in 1972, his acclaimed biography describes Virginia Woolf's family and childhood; her earliest writings; the formation of the Bloomsbury Group; her marriage to Leonard Woolf; the mental breakdown of the years 1912-15; the origins and growth of the Hogarth Press; her friendships with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and Vita Sackvill-West; her s...

First published in 1967, Victorian Artists documents the painting of the Victorian period, that is, the period between the death of Constable and William IV in 1837, the first Post-Impressionist painting in 1910 and the end of an epoch in British painting. Professor Bell has given special attention to some of the pre-Raphaelite artists, and to Sickert and the Camden Town group. These most illuminating and diverting essays, which originated as Slade lectures at Oxford, combined wit...

First published in 1963, The Schools of Design is a history of English Art Education. The story of the genesis of English art schools is one of the fierce conflicts in which private feuds mingle with questions of principle. It is a story of administrative chaos and open scandal in which some long-forgotten figures are involved; others – such as Haydon, Gladstone, Alfred Stevens, Dyce, Stafford Northcote, Etty and Henry Role – appear in a new role. In itself this forms an entertain...

The colourful, salacious and sumptuously illustrated story of Covent Garden - the creative heart of Georgian London - from Wolfson Prize-winning author Vic GatrellSHORT-LISTED FOR THE HESSELL TILTMAN PRIZE 2014In the teeming, disordered, and sexually charged square half-mile centred on London's Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the eighteenth century. It was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'. The nation's most significant ...

Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain’s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life‘Powerful and remarkable. It is a celebration of a great genius. No question: you put Tomalin’s book down knowing that you have met a living author’ Miriam Margolyes, The Times‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic accou...

Jeremy Paxman's unique portrait of the Victorian age takes readers on an exciting journey through the birth of modern Britain. Using the paintings of the era as a starting point, he tells us stories of urban life, family, faith, industry and empire that helped define the Victorian spirit and imagination.To Paxman, these paintings were the television of their day, and his exploration of Victorian art and society shows how these artists were chronicling a world changing before their ...

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, this is the biography of celebrated nineteenth-century artist Edward Burne-Jones, who - with William Morris - connects Victorian and modern art.'A triumph of biographical art.' Independent'Magnificent.' Guardian'Rarely are biographies both as authoritative and engaging as this.' Literary ReviewThe angels on our ...

“We are a trading community, a commercial people. Murder is doubtless a very shocking offence, nevertheless as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.” Punch.Murder in nineteenth-century Britain was ubiquitous – not necessarily in quantity but in quality. This was the era of penny-bloods, early crime fiction and melodramas for the masses. This was a time when murder and entertainment were firmly entwined.In this meticulously researched and compell...

**Finalist for the 2022 Plutarch AwardLonglisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyA Washington Post Best Book of 2021“An elegant act of rehabilitation.”—New York Times Book Review, Editors’ ChoiceA "nuanced and insightful" (New Statesman) portrait of Britain’s most famous female poet, a woman who invented herself and defied her times.**"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabe...

Simon Schama brings Britain to life through its portraits, as seen in the five-part BBC series The Face of Britain and the major National Portrait Gallery exhibitionChurchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century, the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life, a surgeon-artist making studies of wo...

'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.' Wealthy American John Dowell describes in a disarmingly casual, compellingly intimate manner how he and his wife Florence meet an English couple in a German spa resort. They become friends over the years and gradually the history of their relationships and the passions that lie behind the orderly Edwardian façade are unveiled. Dowell is the archetypal 'unreliable narrator', and his casual revelations are both unexpected and ex...

'Fear no more the heat of the sun.' Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered h...