Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell was a central figure within the Bloomsbury Group and lent to it a stability and coherence it might otherwise have lacked. A talented artist she held sway with her acuity integrity and a sense of humour. Yet she remained inscrutable glimpses of her life only appearing through her sister Virginia Woolf. In this authorised biography Frances Spalding draws upon a mass of unpublished documents to reveal Vanessa Bell s considerable achievements in both her art and her increasingly unorthodox life. A sympathetic account is given of her marriage to Clive Bell her affair with Roger Fry and the complex nature of her lasting relationship with Duncan Grant. It is a fitting tribute to a woman of great paradox wit and honesty.