David Garnett

Passions

Vocation

British writer and publisher, a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group known by the nickname "Bunny" to friends and intimates all his life. He was the only child of the writer, critic and publisher Edward Garnett and his wife Constance, a prolific translator of Russian literature. Garnett's novel Lady into Fox, an allegorical fantasy, was awarded the 1922 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. He ran a bookshop near the British Museum with Francis Birrell during the 1920s. He also founded (with Francis Meynell) the Nonesuch Press. He wrote the novel Aspects of Love (1955), on which the later Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was based. Garnett was bisexual and he had affairs with Francis Birrell and Duncan Grant. On 8 May 1942, he married Grant's biological daughter, Angelica (by Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's sister). He was 26 years her senior and had attended her birth. They had four daughters before separating. David Garnett died on 17 February 1981 aged 88 in Montcuq, Lot, France. Link to Wikipedia biography