Photographs, some barely known, on the domestic lives of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) and the historical, cultural and artistic milieux of their circle in Bloomsbury, including Vivienne Eliot, Vita Sackville-West, Lady Ottoline Morrell and Dora Carrington.

This novel of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell “captures the sisters’ seesaw dynamic as they vacillate between protecting and hurting each other” (The Christian Science Monitor). You see, even after all these years, I wonder if you really loved me. Vanessa and Virginia are sisters, best friends, bitter rivals, and artistic collaborators. As children, they fight for the attention of their overextended mother, their brilliant but difficult father, and their adored brother, Thoby. As young women, they support each other through a series of devastating deaths, then emerge in bohemian Bloomsbury, bent on creating new lives and groundbreaking works of art. Through everything—marriage, lovers, loss, madness, children, success and failure—the sisters remain the closest of co-conspirators. But they also betray each other. In this lyrical, impressionistic account, written as a love letter and an elegy from Vanessa to Virginia, Susan Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the lifelong relationship between writer Virginia Woolf and painter Vanessa Bell. With sensitivity and fidelity to what is known of both lives, Sellers has created a powerful portrait of sibling rivalry, and “beautifully imagines what it must have meant to be a gifted artist yoked to a sister of dangerous, provocative genius” (Cleveland Plain Dealer). “A delectable little book for anyone who ever admired the Bloomsbury group. . . . A genuine treat.” —Publishers Weekly

'Prepare to be dazzled' Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife 'One of the essential reads of the year' The Times London, 1905. The city is alight with change and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of brilliant, artistic friends who will come to be known as the legendary Bloomsbury Group. And at the centre of the charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter and Virginia, the writer. Each member of the group will go on to earn fame and success, but so far Vanessa Bell has never sold a painting. Virginia Woolf's book review has just been turned down by The Times. Lytton Strachey has not published anything. E. M. Forster has finished his first novel but does not like the title. Leonard Woolf is still a civil servant in Ceylon, and John Maynard Keynes is looking for a job. Together, this sparkling coterie of artists and intellectuals throw away convention and embrace the wild freedom of being young, single bohemians in London. But the landscape shifts when Vanessa unexpectedly falls in love and her sister feels dangerously abandoned. Eerily possessive, charismatic, manipulative and brilliant, Virginia has always lived in the shelter of Vanessa's constant attention and encouragement. Without it, she careens toward self-destruction and madness. As tragedy and betrayal threaten to destroy the family, Vanessa must choose whether to protect Virginia's happiness or her own.

This compelling new study reveals, for the first time, through an emplaced investigation, the potential of Charleston and Monk's House to illuminate the shared histories of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

By drawing together strands in their subjects' family relations and environment, the authors provide fresh insight into the lives of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. In the formative years of their childhood the two sisters spent every summer with their large family and numerous friends at Talland House in St Ives. In her Introduction Helen Dunmore writes: 'Marion Dell and Marion Whybrow reveal how powerfully the vision of both Woolf and Bell sprang from their early life in St Ives.' The Prologue gives a portrait of this fishing town and artists' colony, 'on the very toe nail of England', at the time of the Stephen family's visits, from the early 1880s. Then come chapters on life at Talland House; the sisters' remarkable parents, Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth Stephen; and Vanessa and Virginia themselves, and how they developed their writing and painting. notable visitors such as the writer Henry James. Later, Marion Whybrow shows us Vanessa learning to paint, until finally basing herself for a lifetime's work as with her family at Charleston in Sussex, the centre for the artists of the Bloomsbury Group. Marion Dell explores how Virginia returned continually to St Ives, both in her life and in her writing.

When Virginia wakes up feeling "wolfish," her sister, Vanessa, tries to cheer her up. After treats, funny faces and other efforts fail, Vanessa begins to paint a glorious mural depicting the world of the sisters’ imagination. Will it help lift Virginia from her doldrums?

This collection contains over 300 letters of painter & decorative designer Vanessa Bell, the central figure in the Bloomsbury group.