The Bloomsbury Group

Heilbrun’s influential analysis of the sexual dissidence characteristic of the Bloomsbury Group first appeared in Midway in 1968, years before queer studies or even gay and lesbian studies gained momentum and legitimacy as scholarly fields. Heilbrun counters the ‘profound hostility’ directed towards Bloomsbury, arguing that this hostility stems from discomfort with members of the Bloomsbury Group’s acceptance, even flaunting, of homosexuality and disruption of normative expectations for masculine and feminine behaviour. For Heilbrun, the group combined the best attributes of stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, to embrace reason and rationality, and to eschew violence, but not passion. But their greatest legacy was their conversation, which was light and fun and serious at the same time. Ideas debated in those conversations inform their immense accomplishments in fields as various as economics and the fine arts, and leads Heilbrun to feel that conversation is ‘the apotheosis of human communication’.