Bell, Anne Olivier

Epithet: wife of Quentin Bell

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000001039.0x000170

(Anne) Olivier Bell was born in 1916, daughter of Arthur Ewart Popham (1889-1970), then an assistant, and later Keeper, in the Department of Prints &Drawings at the British Museum, and his wife Brynhild (ne Olivier). She was educated at St Paul s Girls School, London, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. During World War II she was in the Civil Service and afterwards on the Control Commission for Germany. While working for the Arts Council, she met the artist Vanessa Bell in connection with the Council s 1951 art exhibition, and was invited, as a model, to Clive and Vanessa Bell s home, Charleston in Firle, East Sussex. In 1952 she married their son, Quentin Bell (1910-1996). Vanessa was the sister of the novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). Quentin, latterly founding Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex, wrote a life of his aunt which was published as Virginia Woolf: a biography, 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972). Olivier Bell acted as her husband s researcher and organised the papers which Virginia s husband Leonard (1880-1969) made available (now in SxMs 18, Monks House Papers). She went on to edit with Andrew McNeillie The diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1977-84). This collection comprises the correspondence generated by her research and editorial work and, after the publication of the diaries, by approaches from Bloomsbury admirers, detractors and researchers.

See: Alan &Veronica Palmer, Who s who in Bloomsbury (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987), 6-7.

From the guide to the A. O. Bell Papers, 1970-1997, (University of Sussex Library)