Experiments in Living 1900-1939
In Among the Bohemians Virginia Nicholson charts the valiant experiments of the artistic generation who in the early twentieth century declared war on conformity. The book is a rich and detailed exploration of the way of life of those men and women in the first half of the twentieth century – the majority of them artists, poets, writers and composers - who were brave enough to jettison Victorian conformity. Rebels and free spirits, these were the pioneers of a domestic revolution. Escaping the confines of the society into which they had been born, they carried idealism and creativity into every aspect of daily life. Deaf to disapproval, they got drunk and into debt, took drugs, experimented with homosexuality and open marriages, and brought up their children out of wedlock. In the spirit of liberty, they sacrificed comfortable homes and took to the road in gypsy caravans or moved into spartan garrets in Chelsea. Yet their choice of a free life led all too often to poverty, hunger, addiction and even death.
Among the large cast of flamboyant characters depicted in Virginia Nicholson’s book are such giants of the artistic scene as Augustus John, Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill, alongside their literary counterparts Dylan Thomas, Robert Graves and Arthur Ransome. Lesser-known (but no less colourful) characters include Kathleen Hale, Iris Tree, Philip O'Connor, Nina Hamnett and Ruthven Todd.
“I held a magnifying glass over the habits and domestic lives of artists and writers in this country for the forty-odd years before the Second World War, and it revealed tendencies, overlaps and above all aspirations in common among an entire sub-section of society, that set them apart from the vast mass of conventional British people. This tiny, avant-garde minority possessed a special cohesiveness that went beyond movements and styles in art. Their daily lives seemed touched with an artistic consciousness that bore vivid witness to an ideal about how one should live.”
The Bohemians accelerated the process that was to change the social scene in Britain for ever; they opened the doors for that other great moment of change – the 1960s. Today we still owe many of our freedoms to that pioneer generation.
Among the Bohemians was published by Viking in 2002, and by William Morrow, New York in 2004.
Reviews
“I expected this book to be interesting, but as soon as I opened it I knew it was going to be gorgeous too, and gorgeous books which are not picture books are very few and far between. I was fair hugging myself with delight as I took in the first paragraph of the front jacket flap… this book is very much like a box of shimmering sweeties… …Virginia Nicholson ranges over her vast smorgasbord of vivid material with all the elan of a particularly well-coordinated kitten on a keyboard. This book displays the best of Bohemia itself - playful, dazzling, original… Personally, I’m going to buy half a dozen copies for Christmas presents, and I suggest you do the same.”
“This is popular history at once at its most gossipy and its most intelligent… Nicholson’s command of her sources is remarkable and she moves fluidly between her set pieces… This book is a joy because Nicholson involves herself so thoroughly in her subjects; her love of their idealism, and their earnest moral inquiry, is made extremely infectious.”
“A bright, discursive social history. Nicholson succeeds in showing how unconventional ideas seeped into early twentieth-century consciousness and gradually became the norm. Her book is an entertaining, stimulating read. Well-served by excellent pictures.”
“An outrageously enjoyable and compendious study of Bohemian lives and attitudes… Among the Bohemians is a work of social history as much as a volume of literary criticism and art appreciation… If Nicholson had produced no more than a personal memoir of her grandmother’s eccentric cronies, the book would have been sufficient. She deserves much extra credit, however, for resuscitating many of Bohemia’s marginal figures… Her enormous cast whirls in and out of focus in an all-encompassing jig strikingly similar to Anthony Powell’s fictional recreation of the period, A Dance to the Music of Time.”
“A racy, vivacious and warm-hearted book. Nicholson’s examination of domestic trials as the flipside of bohemian freedom is poignant and revealing… A stimulating book which offers an illuminating and well-researched portrait of life among the artists, a century ago.”
“An extraordinarily rich, provocative study. [Nicholson’s] substantial cast is stage-managed superbly… This book is not just good fun. It raises profound questions about our lives.”
“In a vibrant catalogue of anecdotes and tragic-comic episodes, Nicholson pays homage to British writers and artists who challenged convention before the Second World War… she casts her net wide to include the lesser-known figures…”
“A fascinating and purely English book, which tells us in detail about a quintessentially English society… Virginia Nicholson comes from the heart of her subject. Informative, amusing…”