The
Bloomsbury Group—or
Bloomsbury Set—was an influential group of associated
English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, the best known members of which included
Virginia Woolf,
John Maynard Keynes,
E. M. Forster and
Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied together near
Bloomsbury,
London, during the first half of the 20th century. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts". Their works and outlook deeply influenced
literature,
aesthetics,
criticism, and
economics as well as modern attitudes towards
feminism,
pacifism, and
sexuality.