The essentially “Bloomsbury” features of the modern novel include the effort to find a significant form for personal relationships, innovations in the representation of gender and sexuality, and the cultivation of aesthetic environments. But Bloomsbury’s signature contribution to literary modernity is “the Bloomsbury voice.” Unlike other more radical forms of narration, the Bloomsbury voice (in novels by Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Mulk Raj Anand, and Desmond McCarthy) bespeaks a residual commitment to history and a nostalgic faith in public authority. However, the Bloomsbury voice of historical authority engages ironically with history in crisis, and the result is not only quintessentially Bloomsbury but also a narrative mode more generally well suited to registering the crisis of modernity itself.