Angelica Garnett

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Angelica Garnett (née Bell, December 25, 1918) is a British author and artist. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and is the daughter of Vanessa Bell and painter Duncan Grant. She was the niece of Virginia Woolf.

Her mother's husband, Clive Bell was not her biological father, but was fully supportive of her mother's love affair with Grant, and willingly allowed Angelica to bear his name and to regard him as her father, in order that his conservative family not disinherit her. She was not told of her true parentage until she was seventeen, although she had grown up living with Grant and her mother at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex/England, which her mother had rented and shared with other members of the Bloomsbury Group. The farmhouse is now a museum.

She had two half-brothers: poet Julian Bell, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937; and art historian Quentin Bell.

She married David Garnett, the former lover of her biological father, Duncan Grant, in 1942, but they later separated. They had four daughters: Amaryllis (1943-1973), an actress; Henrietta, a writer; and twins Nerissa and Fanny.

Angelica Garnett is the author of a memoir, Deceived with Kindness, which focuses on her relationship with both of her biological parents. Its somewhat bitter view of both Bell and Grant has proven controversial. The memoir was awarded the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography in 1985. [1]

[edit] References

List of Ackerley Prize winners from englishpen.org