This collection contains over three hundred letters of painter and decorative designer Vanessa Bell, the central figure in the Bloomsbury group. The daughter of Victorian writer Sir Leslie Stephen, and older sister of novelist Virginia Woolf, Bell studied art at the Royal Academy Schools in London and exhibited regularly with the London Group. Along with art critic Roger Fry and painter Duncan Grant, Bell founded the celebrated Omega workshops, which brought their innovative and unrestrained palette to interior design. In these letters, Regina Marler takes the reader from the 1880s to 1961, documenting Bell's fascinating and often oddly romantic relationship with her older sister Elizabeth; her passionate involvement with Roger Fry and, later, Duncan Grant (who himself would have an affair with David Garnett, the future husband of Vanessa's daughter, Angelica); and her anguish at the death of her son, Julian. Strong, passionate, possessive, and liberated, Bell was eager to break with social convention and yet was deeply devoted to her three children, Angelica, Julian, and Quentin. Bell was at the vortex of Bloomsbury life, keeping the house where members gathered and also maintaining the complex relationships among husbands, lovers, and friends.