Bloomsbury archive grabs media attention

The Archive Centre has recently added to its already impressive collection of papers relating to the Bloomsbury Group, and today the story is on national newspaper websites and the BBC news site.

The Centre has acquired and catalogued the letters of novelist Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) and the diaries and photo albums of writer Frances Partridge (1900-2004), and the acquisition has been covered by the following news sources:

• BBC news
• Daily Mail
• Guardian
• Independent
• Telegraph

Both Rosamond Lehmann and Frances Partridge were members of the Bloomsbury Group, the group of writers, artists and intellectuals who met informally and had a major impact on literature, art and politics in the 20th century.

The Rosamond Lehmann collection includes letters from Dora Carrington, EM Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, Virginia Woolf, and her lover Cecil Day Lewis.

Frances Partridge's papers include diaries recording her life with her Bloomsbury Group friends, and letters from Clive and Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Dadie Rylands and the Woolfs. The collection also includes 30 photograph albums, including four kept by Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey. The photos give an intimate glimpse of Bloomsbury at play.

The new acquisitions provide invaluable source material for students of art, literature, European history, and the life of of educated women in the twentieth century. Both Lehmann and Partridge attended Cambridge Colleges just after the First World War.

If you would like to look at any of the collections, please contact the College Archivist (archivist@kings.cam.ac.uk) or see the Archive Centre pages for opening hours and visitor information.