Bloomsbury Group Intellectuals who met in Bloomsbury, London, from c.1907. They included the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell; novelists E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf; her husband Leonard Woolf, a publisher; economist John Maynard Keynes, and biographer Lytton Strachey. The group's attitudes were influenced by the empiricist philosopher G. E. Moore, and are encapsulated in his statement: “the rational ultimate end of human progress consists in the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects.”

Bloomsbury Group. A circle of artists, writers, and critics meeting in private houses in Bloomsbury, London, who in their revolt against the artistic, social, and sexual restrictions of Victorian society were an important influence on cultural and intellectual life in the early decades of the 20th cent. Most had studied at Cambridge, and were influenced by the philosopher G. E. Moore, whose Principia ethica (1903) emphasized the importance of personal relationships and aesthetic experience. Among leading members were Clive and Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, J. Maynard Keynes, and Virginia Woolf.

June Cochrane

Bloomsbury Group a group of writers, artists, and philosophers living in or associated with Bloomsbury in the early 20th century. Members of the group, which included Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, were known for their unconventional lifestyles and attitudes and were a powerful force in the growth of modernism.