The Bloomsbury CookbookRecipes for Life, Love and Art

Throwing aside the stifling patriarchy of late Victorian Britain, the Bloomsbury Group fostered a fresh, creative, and vital way of living that encouraged debate and communications, as often as not across the dining table. In The Bloomsbury Cookbook, Jans Ondaatje Rolls collects more than 180 recipes for dishes that take us into the very heart of their world through the meals around which they congregated, argued, debated, laughed, and loved.

Gathered at these tables were many of the great figures in art, literature, and economics as the modern world was created and tirelessly interpreted: E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, J.M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Arranged chronologically from the late 19th century through the ascendency of the group between the wars, all the way to their present-day legacy, the book gathers together hundreds of photographs, letters, journals, paintings, and delicious recipes—some handwritten and never-before-published—that bring to life the group’s lingering breakfasts and “painting lunches.” Part cookbook, part social and cultural history, The Bloomsbury Cookbook will delight the modern chef searching for a certain distinctiveness, but also recreates an intimate portrait of a vastly influential intellectual and artistic community.