Angelica Vanessa Garnett (née Bell, born 25 December 1918) is a British writer and painter. She is the illegitimate daughter of the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, niece of Virginia Woolf, and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Her mother's husband, Clive Bell, was not her biological father, but was fully supportive of her mother's love affair with Grant, and willingly allowed Angelica to bear his name and to regard him as her father in order that his conservative family not disinherit her. She was not told of her true parentage until she was seventeen, although she had grown up living with Grant and her mother at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex/England, which her mother had rented and shared with other members of the Bloomsbury Group. The farmhouse is now a museum.

She had two half-brothers: poet Julian Bell, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937; and art historian Quentin Bell.

She married David Garnett, the former lover of her biological father, Duncan Grant, in 1942, but they later separated. They had four daughters: Amaryllis Virginia (1943-1973), an actress; Henrietta Garnett, a writer and custodian of the family legacy (b. 1945); and twins Nerissa Stephen (1946-2004), called Nel, a painter, photographer and ceramics artist; and Frances, called Fanny (also b. 1946).

Angelica Garnett is the author of a memoir, Deceived with Kindness, which focuses on her relationship with both of her biological parents. Its somewhat bitter view of both Bell and Grant has proven controversial. The memoir was awarded the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography in 1985.

References

1. The Papers of Angelica Garnett (née Bell), King's College, Cambridge.
2. Malcolm, Janet: Sisters, Lovers, Tarts and Friends, The New York Times, 3 March 1996.
3. Past J.R. Ackerley Prize winners, English Pen.

• Charleston Farmhouse