Profile of Lytton Strachey on Famous Like Me

Giles Lytton Strachey (March 1, 1880–January 21, 1932) was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.

Life

Strachey was born in London, the son of Sir Richard Strachey, an engineer. His sister was Dorothy Strachey. From 1899 to 1905, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, having previously read history at the University of Liverpool. The friendships he made at Cambridge with people such as John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf and Clive Bell drew him into the Bloomsbury group. From 1904 to 1914 he contributed book and drama reviews to The Spectator magazine, published poetry, and wrote an important work of literary criticism, Landmarks in French Literature (1912). During World War I, he was a conscientious objector, and spent much time with like-minded people such as Lady Ottoline Morrell and the "Bloomsberries". His first great success, and his most famous achievement, was Eminent Victorians (1918), a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. With a dry wit, he exposed the human failings of his subjects and what he saw as the hypocrisy at the centre of Victorian morality. This work was followed in the same style by Queen Victoria (1921). He died at his country house near Hungerford in Berkshire.

Strachey's homosexuality was revealed in a biography (1967-8) by Michael Holroyd. His unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington (she loved him, but Strachey was much more interested in her husband, Ralph Partridge) was portrayed in the film Carrington (1995). His letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.

Books

• Landmarks in French Literature (1912)
• Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon (1918)
• Queen Victoria (1921)
• Books and Characters (1922)
• Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928)
• Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (1931)
• Characters and Commentaries (ed. James Strachey, 1933)
• Spectatorial Essays (ed. James Strachey, 1964)
• Ermyntrude and Esmeralda (1969)
• Lytton Strachey by Himself: A Self Portrait (ed. Michael Holroyd, 1971)
• The Really Interesting Question and Other Papers (ed. Paul Levy, 1972)
• The Letters of Lytton Strachey (ed. Paul Levy, 2005) ISBN 0670891126

Verse

• Ely: an Ode (written at Trinity College)

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