Roger Fry by Virginia Woolf (1940) (Ronald Blythe)

From the library of Ronald Blythe and with his neat ownership signature to top right corner of front pastedown. A  deeply personal yet analytical portrait of her friend and fellow member of the Bloomsbury Group, Roger Fry. Woolf’s biography stands out for its form of narration, which blended traditional biography with her own way of writing literature. She reflects on Fry’s professional accomplishments, including how he arranged the Post-Impressionist exhibitions in both 1910 and 1912 to shatter the views held by British art and nurture contemporaries like Clive Bell and Fry himself in their views advocating art as a medium for pure emotional experience. Woolf’s writing testifies to Fry’s modernism and his sometimes provocative theories on “pure form” in art, as well as to his making great strides upon British aesthetics. Although she primarily resists the more personal areas of his private life, she does bring out Fry’s character, intellectual stringency, and the feeling of personal tragedy due to his wife’s insanity. Condition: green cloth boards and spine sunned with some light wear to extremities. Some light dust marks and light wear to edges of dust-wrapper. Toning to half-title page and rear endpaper. Neat inscription to front paste-down, otherwise very good.