Lily Briscoe's Chinese Eyes traces the romance between Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf, and Ling Shuhua, a writer and painter Bell met while teaching at Wuhan University in China in 1935. Relying on a wide selection of previously unpublished writings, Patricia Laurence places Ling, often referred to as the Chinese Katherine Mansfield, squarely in the Bloomsbury constellation. In doing so, she counters East-West polarities and suggests forms of understanding to inaugurate a new kind of cultural criticism and literary description. Laurence expands her examination of Bell and Ling's relationship into a study of parallel literary communities-Bloomsbury in England and the Crescent Moon group in China. Underscoring their reciprocal influences in the early part of the twentieth century, Laurence presents conversations among well-known British and Chinese writers, artists, and historians, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, G. L. Dickinson, Xu Zhimo, E. M. Forster, and Xiao Qian. In addition, Laurence's study includes rarely seen photographs of Julian Bell, Ling, and their associates as well as a reproduction of Ling's scroll commemorating moments in the exchange between Bloomsbury and the Crescent Moon group.

Copublished with Pace University Press, this book is a valuable addition to scholarship on Bloomsbury, the history of women in Britain, and the work of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It portrays an era and illuminates the work of a number of famous writers by examining less well-known lives and works that were part of the adaptive complex, or milieu. Several essays and appendices contribute significantly to our understanding of the extent that the Woolfs collaborated with each other and with others. Beside the literary histories of S.P. Rosenbaum, this collection of original essays will be essential reading for students of Bloomsbury and women's history. Illustrated.