Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists by Laura Freeman (Jonathan Cape, £30)

The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists 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. The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, David Jones, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line.

Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly wasn't only for the rich. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. He showed generations of visitors that learning to look could be a whole new way of life.

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“The beautiful, revelatory biography of Jim Ede and Kettle's Yard that we have been waiting for. I loved it” ― Edmund de Waal

“Ways of Life is a portable Kettle's Yard, an entrancing book of immense and curious beauty” ― Ruth Scurr

“Over the many years that I've been visiting Kettle's Yard, it's as if the place has become a dear friend; now with this beautifully constructed book I am able to meet the man whose presence and artistic acuity can be seen in every room and in every careful juxtaposition of images. Wonderful!” ― Julia Blackburn

“Freeman's attention falls on each particular of Ede's life and turns it over like a polished pebble in a jacket pocket. Along with his gallery, this book is the legacy he might have wished for” ― Observer

“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

“It is an extraordinary tale and could not have been told better or with more sensitivity. Her book will make anyone want to pay an immediate visit” ― Literary Review

“A cabinet of curiosities . . . it tells the story of a life and a century” ― London Review of Books

“Freeman... bring[s] characters vividly to life on the page, recreating the lively circle that joined in Ede's many activities with sympathy and panache...Ways of Life conjures his spirit and continues his mission in style” ― Tablet

“Visitors were greeted with open arms and a private tour in which he would point out the subtle relationships he had curated between the artworks. It was more than an act of generosity, it was an act of love. As is this biography” - Will Gompertz, The Times