Vanessa Bell - Softcover

Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer, and a leading authority on Bloomsbury. She wrote an introduction to the subject, The Bloomsbury Group, for the National Portrait Gallery's Companion series, and has written biographies of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and of the poet Stevie Smith, as well as Vanessa Bell. For ten years she edited the Charleston Magazine. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Art History at Newcastle University, and was awarded a CBE in 2005.

Vanessa Bell emerges from Frances Spalding's sensitive and scholarly biography as an unexpectedly formidable figure...the central portrait is full and generous and it rings wonderfully true.

...a compelling life, one worth telling, unusual in its social and intellectual contrasts, formidable in its cast of characters, poignant in its alternations of happiness and despair.

"...an excellent biography: it could hardly be bettered... she has brought Vanessa Bell back to life...As a chronicle of human entanglements, and of the ways in which they were resolved, it wil have an enduring fascination...Vanessa Bell adds a new and indispensable dimension to our knowledge of Bloomsbury, and it is very much to be welcomed."