The Bloomsbury Group represents two successive generations from several distinguished families who were highly influential in British history and culture. Of these ancestors, the feminine members have been comparatively neglected. These women are noteworthy for their creativity and charm. Their influence on their children, and the children of their siblings, is observed in the literary works of the Bloomsbury Group as well as in their political liberalism, their feminism, their unconventionality and their devotion to each other as to members of a clan. This book chronicles the lives of a selection of immediate ancestors of the Bloomsbury Group's members. It shows how the lives and careers of these women and their familities bring the British Empire, especially British India, into the immediate background of the Bloomsbury Group and to help explain the existence of its innermost circle, the Memoir Club.--Book Jacket.