From Biography to History and back: Iris Origo between
Bloomsbury and Tuscany
An independent scholar of Anglo-American background, Iris Origo
(1902-1988) lived and wrote in Italy. She is remembered as the author of
several biographies, as well as of a pioneering volume of social history, The
Merchant of Prato (1957). Based on her unpublished papers and
correspondence, this essay tries to reconstruct her intellectual profile and to
assess her contribution to 20th-century historiography. In The Merchant of
Prato Origo creatively applied to history the “New Biography” model
advocated by key figures of the Bloomsbury circle, such as Lytton Strachey
and Virginia Woolf. Her case suggests that we may have overestimated the
role of the French «Les Annales» School in the renewal of 20th-century
historical writing. In fact, Origo’s innovative approach to the history of the
family, marriage, and women did not derive from «Les Annales» but was
inspired by new trends in English historiography, in particular by the work of
Eileen Power on social history and women’s history, and, more generally, by
Bloomsbury’s critical revision of late Victorian cultural standards.