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, and famously portrayed by Miranda Richardson in the 2002 film The Hours, she held sway with her acuity, integrity and sense of humour. Yet she remained inscrutable, glimpses of her life only appearing through her more famous sister, Virginia Woolf.

In this classic authorised biography, Frances Spalding draws upon a mass of unpublished documents to reveal Vanessa Bell''s considerable achievements, in both her art and her increasingly unorthodox life. She reveals the central role played by Vanessa in the making of Bloomsbury and uncovers many new and intimate details about the set''s domestic, sexual, social and creative lives.

As an artist, Vanessa Bell has figured in a number of major exhibitions and is recognised as a key figure within the development of modernist painting in Britain. She has had an entire room at the Tate devoted to her work. Yet this lynchpin of one of the most famous cultural sets of modern times has remained an enigma to her many admirers, and it is only in this portrait of her life that a true account can be 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.