James King is Professor Emeritus of English at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His previous books include Paul Nash: Designer and Illustrator (2022).
""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)"" ""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"" ""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"" ""'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)""