‘Our Little Gang’: The Lives of the Vorticists

“[A] comprehensive history of vorticism, a short-lived avant-garde art movement formed in England in 1913. . . . Drawing on archival materials, the author scrupulously . . . captures the volatile sociopolitical moment that birthed vorticism and eventually killed it. Art history scholars will find much to appreciate.” ― Publishers Weekly

“[A] gorgeously illustrated book. . . . King splendidly succeeds in his aim to restore Dismorr and Saunders to their rightful place at the centre of Vorticism.” — Christoph Irmscher ― The Art Newspaper

“One of the fascinations of King’s ‘Our Little Gang’ lies in . . . questions of definition, distinction, and affiliation, in trying to establish what the people featured in it thought of themselves, each other, and, above all, the art they aspired to practice. Unsurprisingly, the author spends a fair amount of this evenhanded study trying to establish what Vorticism—a term that only began to surface in magazine reviews when the movement was about to expire—actually means. . . . King turns a sympathetic and well-informed eye on all of this and is always interesting on individual works.” ― New Criterion

“A volume of expansive documentation that is informative in its brief analyses and potted biographies.”

— Keith Garebian ― Literary Review of Canada

“King is forever focusing our gaze on what matters most: looking back at their efforts to free themselves from the constraints of the stodgy artistic past, and to make vibrant abstract work that occupied a future they sincerely wanted build, and we can still marvel at the sheer romantic scope of their heartfelt intention to live out a palpable utopian dream.” — Donald Brackett ― Embodied Meanings

“King’s book aims to capture both the sense of intellectual and aesthetic possibility and excitement, the cultural ferment of the moment, and the range of forceful, not to say conflicting, personalities in the group, which included both Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, as well as—unusually in these very male-dominated groups—two women: Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders. It ought to be both hugely enjoyable and an excellent introduction to a brief but influential cohort of artists and writers.” — Mathew Lyons ― The Broken Compass

“Vorticism was so aspirational and so intense that at times it got lost in its own intentions…but for its machine age embrace of abstraction, nothing could surpass it. With its title derived from a comment by Ezra Pound once made, ‘Our Little Gang,’ King’s book covers a movement so misunderstood that he took an in-depth, artist-by-artist approach to clarifying it all.”

― Artlyst

“‘Our Little Gang’: The Lives of the Vorticists by King traces the history of the Vorticists, a group of young artists, including Jessica Dismorr, Wyndham Lewis, and Ezra Pound, who defied conventions with their abstract art in the early twentieth century.” ― Publishers Weekly (Spring 2025 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview: Art, Architecture & Photography)

“In ‘Our Little Gang’ King casts appealing new light on Vorticism, the early twentieth-century avant-garde British art movement organized by painter and polemicist Wyndham Lewis. King explores the Vorticists’ commonalities and friendships, their individual differences from Lewis, their multiple rivalries, their grudges and their aesthetic disagreements. King’s lively historiography—and his attention to the importance of the often overlooked female Vorticists—offers a fresh approach to the movement that should interest all aficionados of modernist art.” — Scott W. Klein, professor of English, Wake Forest University, and coeditor of “Vorticism: New Perspectives”

“As well as conveying the radical extremism of the Vorticists’ revolt in art, King vividly shows just how idiosyncratic they were as feisty personalities.” — Richard Cork, author of “Encounters with Artists”

“The ‘gang’ were seven highly talented, self-assured artists with a desire to set Britain’s parochial art scene on fire. . . . This book is notable for its inclusion of Dismorr and Saunders, the two female members who have been overlooked until now. Both made a valuable contribution to a movement that threw a firework into the heart of the British establishment, exposing an environment hostile to artistic innovation. The ‘Vorticist effect’ reverberated long after the group’s collapse, setting a precedent for future radicalism.” ― Christie’s (Best Art Books of 2025)

“In ‘Our Little Gang’ King casts appealing new light on Vorticism, the early twentieth-century avant-garde British art movement organized by painter and polemicist Wyndham Lewis. King explores the Vorticists’ commonalities and friendships, their individual differences from Lewis, their multiple rivalries, their grudges and their aesthetic disagreements. King’s lively historiography—and his attention to the importance of the often overlooked female Vorticists—offers a fresh approach to the movement that should interest all aficionados of modernist art.” — Scott W. Klein, professor of English, Wake Forest University, and coeditor of “Vorticism: New Perspectives”

“As well as conveying the radical extremism of the Vorticists’ revolt in art, King vividly shows just how idiosyncratic they were as feisty personalities.” — Richard Cork, author of “Encounters with Artists”