Ways of Life
Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists
Published on 18. September 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
496 pages
978-1-5299-3231-7 (ISBN)
Description
This first biography of the Kettle's Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art
'Beautifully written... A book I have always hoped someone would write' NIGEL SLATER
'[An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography. Strongly recommend' INDIA KNIGHT
'The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it' EDMUND DE WAAL
Jim Ede was a man of remarkable energy and vision: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. As Laura Freeman shows in this captivating biography, the lives of Ede and the artists he championed represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art.
At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. Art ca be found there wherever you look - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. His approach has shown generations of visitors that learning to look can be a whole new way of life.
'A beautiful, original biography... Freeman's writing has Ede's flair, grace and insight' FINANCIAL TIMES
'An extraordinary tale' LITERARY REVIEW
'A cabinet of curiosities... The story of a life and of a century' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Beautifully written... A book I have always hoped someone would write' NIGEL SLATER
'[An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography. Strongly recommend' INDIA KNIGHT
'The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it' EDMUND DE WAAL
Jim Ede was a man of remarkable energy and vision: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. As Laura Freeman shows in this captivating biography, the lives of Ede and the artists he championed represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art.
At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. Art ca be found there wherever you look - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. His approach has shown generations of visitors that learning to look can be a whole new way of life.
'A beautiful, original biography... Freeman's writing has Ede's flair, grace and insight' FINANCIAL TIMES
'An extraordinary tale' LITERARY REVIEW
'A cabinet of curiosities... The story of a life and of a century' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
Reviews / Votes
A captivating biography * House & Garden * If ever the spirit of a gallery is captured within hard covers, it is Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, in this beautiful, original biography of its founder... Freeman's writing has Ede's flair, grace and insight * Financial Times, *Best Books of 2023* * If you know and love Kettle's Yard, a place that redefined 20th-century British art and I would say also interiors, or at least ways of living (and seeing), this is the book that finally does it justice... [An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography. Strongly recommend. -- India Knight An impassioned biography * The Times, *Top 50 Non-Fiction Books* * An excellent biography of Jim Ede. Reading Laura Freeman's luminous study of the curator and collector, I can't help but picture the gallery and house he built - the haven of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge * Daily Telegraph * Beautifully written... A book I have always hoped someone would write. -- Nigel Slater Freeman has done a wonderful job here in conveying with absolute precision why Ede mattered and what made him different from his Bloomsbury contemporaries * Sunday Times * A thorough and entertaining biography... Excellently paced * The Times * Meticulously researched, sympathetically told, the book is infused with the spirit of Kettle's Yard * i * Ways of Life is a portable Kettle's Yard, an entrancing book of immense and curious beauty -- Ruth Scurr, author of Fatal PurityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
450 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-3231-7 (9781529932317)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2023
Vintage Digital
€11.99
Available for download
Person
Laura Freeman is chief art critic of The Times. She has written for the Spectator, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Apollo and World of Interiors. Her first book The Reading Cure, a memoir about hunger and happiness, addiction, obsession and recovery, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018. She studied history of art at Magdalene College, Cambridge.