Editing Bloomsbury Group (section)

== Origins ==
[[File:SomeBloomsburymembers.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Left to right: [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]], [[Maria Nys]] (neither members of Bloomsbury), [[Lytton Strachey]], [[Duncan Grant]], and [[Vanessa Bell]]]]

All male members of the Bloomsbury Group, except [[Duncan Grant]], were educated at [[Cambridge University|Cambridge]] (either at [[Trinity College, Cambridge|Trinity]] or [[King's College, Cambridge|King's College]]). Most of them, except [[Clive Bell]] and the Stephen brothers, were members of "the exclusive [[Cambridge]] society, the '[[Cambridge Apostles|Apostles]]'".<ref name="Blythe p. 54" /><ref name="Gadd p. 20" /> At Trinity in 1899 [[Lytton Strachey]], [[Leonard Woolf]], [[Saxon Sydney-Turner]] and [[Clive Bell]] became good friends with [[Thoby Stephen]], and it was through Thoby and [[Adrian Stephen]]'s sisters [[Vanessa Bell|Vanessa]] and [[Virginia Woolf|Virginia]] that the men met the women of [[Bloomsbury]] when they came down to London.<ref name="Blythe p. 54">Blythe, p. 54</ref><ref name="Gadd p. 20">Gadd, p. 20</ref>

In 1905 Vanessa began the "Friday Club" and Thoby ran "Thursday Evenings", which became the basis for the Bloomsbury Group,<ref name="Timeline">Tate, Bloomsbury timeline</ref> which to some was really "Cambridge in London".<ref name="Blythe p. 54" /> Thoby's premature death in 1906 brought them more firmly together<ref name="Gadd p. 20" /> and they became what is now known as the "Old Bloomsbury" group who met in earnest beginning in 1912. In the 1920s and 1930s the group shifted when the original members died and the next generation had reached adulthood.<ref>Rosenbaum, p. 142</ref>

The Bloomsbury Group, mostly from upper middle-class professional families, formed part of "an intellectual aristocracy which could trace itself back to the [[Clapham Sect]]".<ref name="Blythe p. 54" /> It was an informal network<ref>Gadd, pp. 1, 45</ref><ref>Kuper p. 224</ref> of an influential group of artists, art critics, writers and an economist, many of whom lived in [[London postal district|the West Central 1 district of London]] known as [[Bloomsbury]].<ref name="Avery p. 33">Avery, p. 33.</ref> They were "spiritually" similar to the Clapham group who supported its members' careers: "The Bloomsberries promoted one another's work and careers just as the original Claphamites did, as well as the intervening generations of their grandparents and parents."<ref name="Kuper p. 241">Kuper, p. 241.</ref>

A historical feature of these friends and relations is that their close relationships all pre-dated their fame as writers, artists, and thinkers.<ref name="Clark p. 56" />