Lytton Strachey
Encyclopedia
Giles Lytton Strachey 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. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
.
, London
, the fifth son and the eleventh child of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey
, an officer in the colonial British armed forces, and his second wife, the former Jane Grant, who became a leading supporter of the women's suffrage movement. He was named "Giles Lytton" after an early sixteenth-century Gyles Strachey and the first Earl of Lytton
, who had been a friend of Richard Strachey's when he was Viceroy of India
in the late 1870s. The Earl of Lytton was also Lytton Strachey's godfather. The Stracheys had thirteen children in total, ten of whom survived to adulthood, including Lytton's sister Dorothy Strachey
.
When Lytton was four years old, the family moved from Stowey House to 69 Lancaster Gate
, north of Kensington Gardens
. This would be their home until Sir Richard Strachey retired twenty years later. Lady Strachey was an enthusiast for languages and literature, making her children perform their own plays and write verse from early ages. She thought that Lytton had potential to become a great artist so she decided that he would receive the best education possible in order to be "enlightened". By 1887 he had begun the study of French, a culture he would admire during his entire life.
Strachey was educated at a series of schools, beginning with one at Parkstone
, Dorset
. This was a small school with a wide range of after class activities, where Strachey would exceed the other students' acting skills, being particularly convincing when portraying female parts. He would even tell his mother how much he liked dressing as a woman in real life so as to confuse and entertain others. Lady Strachey decided on 1893 that her son should start getting a more serious education, sending him to the Abbotsholme School in Rocester
, Derbyshire
where students were required to do manual work on a daily basis. Strachey's fragile physique couldn't take it and after few months he was transferred to Leamington College
, where he would be victim of savage bullying. Sir Richard was tired of his son's delicate personality so he told him to "grin and bear the petty bullying". Strachey did eventually adapt to the school's life, becoming one of its best students. His health also seemed to improve during the three years he spent at Leamington, although various illnesses continued to plague him.
When in 1897 Strachey turned seventeen, Lady Strachey decided that her son was ready to leave school and go to university, but because she thought he was yet too young for Oxford
she decided that he should first attend a smaller institution - the University of Liverpool
. At Liverpool Strachey befriended his Professor of Modern Literature, Walter Raleigh
, who, besides being his favourite lecturer, also became the most influential figure in his life before he went up to Cambridge
. In 1899 Strachey took the Christ Church
scholarship examination, wanting to get into Oxford's Balliol
. The examiners determined that Strachey's academic achievements were not remarkable, plus they were struck by his "shyness and nervousness". They recommended Lincoln College
as a more suitable institution for Strachey, an advice that Lady Strachey took as an insult, deciding then that her son would attend Cambridge's Trinity College
instead.
Strachey was admitted as Pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge
, on 30 September 1899. He became an Exhibitioner in 1900 and a Scholar in 1902. He won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse in 1902 and was given a B.A. degree after he had won a second-class in the History Tripos in June 1903. He did not, however, take a leave of Trinity but remained there until October 1905 to work on a thesis which he hoped would gain him a Fellowship. Strachey was often ill and had to leave Cambridge repeatedly in order to recover from the palpitations that would subdue him.
The Cambridge period was a happy and productive one in Strachey's life. Among the freshmen
at Trinity there were three with whom Strachey soon became closely associated: Clive Bell
, Leonard Woolf
and Saxon Sydney-Turner
. Together with one undergraduate, A. J. Robertson, the five students formed a small society called "The Midnight Society" which, in the opinion of Clive Bell, formed the source of the Bloomsbury Group
. Strachey also belonged to the "Conversazione Society," the famous "Cambridge Apostles
" to which Tennyson
, Hallam
, Maurice, and Sterling
had once belonged. The Cambridge period was also one in which Strachey was highly prolific in writing verse, much of which has been preserved and some of which was published at the time. At Cambridge Strachey also became acquainted with other men who would greatly influence him like G. Lowes Dickinson, John Maynard Keynes
, Walter Lamb (brother of painter Henry Lamb
), George Mallory
, Bertrand Russell
, and G. E. Moore. Moore's philosophy, with its assumption that the summum bonum lies in achieving a high quality of humanity, in experiencing delectable states of mind, and in intensifying experience by contemplating great works of art, was a particularly important influence.
In the summer of 1903 Strachey applied for a position in the Education Department of the Civil Service. Even though the letters of recommendation written for him by those under whom he had studied showed that he was held in high esteem by those at Cambridge, he failed to get the appointment and decided to try for a fellowship in Trinity College. He spent from 1903 to 1905 writing his four hundred page thesis on Warren Hastings
, which wasn't very well received among the scientists of his time.
When in the autumn of 1905 he left Trinity College, his mother assigned him a bed-sitting room at 69 Lancaster Gate. After the family moved to 67 Belsize Gardens in Hampstead
and later to another house in the same street, he was assigned bed-sitters. But, as he was about to turn 30, family life started irritating him, and he took to traveling into the country more often, supporting himself by writing reviews and critical articles for The Spectator
and other periodicals. About 1910-11 he spent some time at Saltsjöbaden
, near Stockholm
in Sweden
. In this period he also lived for a while in a cottage on Dartmoor
and about 1911-12 spent a whole winter at East Ilsley
on the Berkshire Downs
. It would be during this time that he decided to grow a beard, which would become his most characteristic feature. On 9 May 1911, he would write to his mother:
In 1911, H. A. L. Fisher, onetime president of the British Academy
and of the Board of Education, was in search of someone to write a short, one-volume survey of French literature. Fisher had read one of Strachey's reviews ("Two Frenchmen", Independent Review (1903)) and asked him to write a sketch of French literature in fifty thousand words, giving him J. W. Mackail's 1909 Latin Literature as a model. Landmarks in French Literature, dedicated to"J[ane] M[aria] S[trachey]," his mother, was published on 12 January 1912. Despite almost a full column of praise in its honor in The Times Literary Supplement
of 1 February and sales, that by April 1914, had reached nearly 12,000 copies in the British Empire
and America
, the book did not bring Strachey either the fame or the money which he so badly needed.
and from other periodicals, made it possible for him to rent a small, thatched cottage called "The Lacket" outside the village of Lockeridge, near Marlborough, Wiltshire. Here he established himself until 1916. Here also he wrote the first three parts of Eminent Victorians
.
Strachey's theory of biography was now fully developed and mature. He was being greatly influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels Strachey had been reading and reviewing as they appeared in Constance Garnett
's translations. The influence of Freud
would also be important on Strachey's later works, most notably on Elizabeth and Essex.
In 1916 Lytton Strachey was back in London living with his mother at 6 Belsize Park Gardens
, Hampstead
, where she had now moved. In the late autumn of 1917, however, his brother Oliver and his friends Harry Norton, John Maynard Keynes, and Saxon Sydney-Turner agreed to pay the rent on "The Mill House" at Tidmarsh
, near Pangbourne
, Berkshire
. After the success of Eminent Victorians
, published on 9 May 1918, he needed no help from the outside. He continued to live at Tidmarsh until the proceeds from Queen Victoria (1921) made it possible for him to buy Ham Spray House near Marlborough, Wiltshire, to which he moved in July 1924, and which was his home for the rest of his life.
At Cambridge he had become close friends with non-Apostles Thoby Stephen
and Clive Bell
, and they, together with sisters Vanessa
and Virginia Stephen
(later Bell and Woolf respectively), eventually formed the Bloomsbury group
. From 1904 to 1914 Strachey contributed book and drama reviews to The Spectator magazine.
During World War I
he applied for recognition as a conscientious objector
, but in the event was granted exemption from military service on health grounds. He 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. This work was followed in the same style by Queen Victoria (1921). He died of (then undiagnosed) stomach cancer at age 51 at his country house, Ham Spray House, at Ham
in Wiltshire
.
Though Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends (he had a relationship with John Maynard Keynes
, who also was part of the Bloomsbury group), it was not widely publicised until the late 1960s, in a biography by Michael Holroyd
. He had an unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington
. She loved him and they lived together from 1917 until his death. In 1921 Carrington agreed to marry Ralph Partridge, not for love but to secure the three-way relationship. She committed suicide two months after Strachey's death. Strachey himself had been much more interested sexually in Partridge, as well as in various other young men. Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.
in the 1995 film Carrington
. The film won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1996, and Pryce won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Strachey. Lytton Strachey was also portrayed by James Fleet
in the film Al sur de Granada
.
Virginia Woolf
's husband Leonard Woolf
has said that in her experimental novel, The Waves
, that "there is something of Lytton in Neville". Lytton is also said to be the inspiration behind the character of St. John Hirst in her novel The Voyage Out
. Michael Holroyd
also describes Strachey as the inspiration behind Cedric Furber in Wyndham Lewis
' The Self-Condemned. In Wyndham Lewis
' novel The Apes of God
, he is seen in the character of Matthew Plunkett, whom Holroyd describes as "a maliciously distorted and hilarious caricature of Lytton". In the Terminus Note in E.M. Forster's Maurice
, Forster remarks that the Cambridge undergraduate Risley in the novel is based on Strachey.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
in which psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...
.
Youth
Strachey was born on 1 March 1880, at Stowey House, Clapham CommonClapham Common
Clapham Common is an 89 hectare triangular area of grassland situated in south London, England. It was historically common land for the parishes of Battersea and Clapham, but was converted to parkland under the terms of the Metropolitan Commons Act 1878.43 hectares of the common are within the...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the fifth son and the eleventh child of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey
Richard Strachey
Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Strachey, GCSI, FRS , British soldier and Indian administrator, third son of Edward Strachey and grandson of Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet was born on 24 July 1817, at Sutton Court, Stowey, Somerset...
, an officer in the colonial British armed forces, and his second wife, the former Jane Grant, who became a leading supporter of the women's suffrage movement. He was named "Giles Lytton" after an early sixteenth-century Gyles Strachey and the first Earl of Lytton
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton
Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, PC was an English statesman and poet...
, who had been a friend of Richard Strachey's when he was Viceroy of India
Governor-General of India
The Governor-General of India was the head of the British administration in India, and later, after Indian independence, the representative of the monarch and de facto head of state. The office was created in 1773, with the title of Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William...
in the late 1870s. The Earl of Lytton was also Lytton Strachey's godfather. The Stracheys had thirteen children in total, ten of whom survived to adulthood, including Lytton's sister Dorothy Strachey
Dorothy Bussy
Dorothy Bussy was an English novelist and translator.-Family background and childhood:Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family, one of ten children of Jane Strachey and the great British Empire soldier and administrator Lt-Gen Sir Richard Strachey...
.
When Lytton was four years old, the family moved from Stowey House to 69 Lancaster Gate
Lancaster Gate
Lancaster Gate is a mid-19th century development in the Bayswater district of west central London, immediately to the north of Kensington Gardens. It consists of two long terraces of houses overlooking the park, with a wide gap between them opening onto a square containing a church. Further...
, north of Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. It is shared between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares .The open spaces...
. This would be their home until Sir Richard Strachey retired twenty years later. Lady Strachey was an enthusiast for languages and literature, making her children perform their own plays and write verse from early ages. She thought that Lytton had potential to become a great artist so she decided that he would receive the best education possible in order to be "enlightened". By 1887 he had begun the study of French, a culture he would admire during his entire life.
Strachey was educated at a series of schools, beginning with one at Parkstone
Parkstone
Parkstone is an area of Poole, Dorset. It is divided into 'Lower' and 'Upper' Parkstone. Upper Parkstone - "Up-on-'ill" as it used to be known in local parlance - is so-called because it is largely on higher ground slightly to the north of the lower-lying area of Lower Parkstone - "The Village" -...
, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
. This was a small school with a wide range of after class activities, where Strachey would exceed the other students' acting skills, being particularly convincing when portraying female parts. He would even tell his mother how much he liked dressing as a woman in real life so as to confuse and entertain others. Lady Strachey decided on 1893 that her son should start getting a more serious education, sending him to the Abbotsholme School in Rocester
Rocester
Rocester is a village and civil parish in the East Staffordshire district of Staffordshire, England. Its name is spelt Rowcestre in the Domesday Book.-Geography:...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
where students were required to do manual work on a daily basis. Strachey's fragile physique couldn't take it and after few months he was transferred to Leamington College
Warwickshire College
Warwickshire College is a large further and higher education college in England. It provides National Curriculum courses and vocational education in a broad range of subjects to students aged 16 and over...
, where he would be victim of savage bullying. Sir Richard was tired of his son's delicate personality so he told him to "grin and bear the petty bullying". Strachey did eventually adapt to the school's life, becoming one of its best students. His health also seemed to improve during the three years he spent at Leamington, although various illnesses continued to plague him.
When in 1897 Strachey turned seventeen, Lady Strachey decided that her son was ready to leave school and go to university, but because she thought he was yet too young for Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
she decided that he should first attend a smaller institution - the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
. At Liverpool Strachey befriended his Professor of Modern Literature, Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh (professor)
Professor Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh was an English scholar, poet and author.He was born in London, the fifth child and only son of a local Congregationalist minister...
, who, besides being his favourite lecturer, also became the most influential figure in his life before he went up to Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. In 1899 Strachey took the Christ Church
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
scholarship examination, wanting to get into Oxford's Balliol
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
. The examiners determined that Strachey's academic achievements were not remarkable, plus they were struck by his "shyness and nervousness". They recommended Lincoln College
Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...
as a more suitable institution for Strachey, an advice that Lady Strachey took as an insult, deciding then that her son would attend Cambridge's Trinity College
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
instead.
Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, on 30 September 1899. He became an Exhibitioner in 1900 and a Scholar in 1902. He won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse in 1902 and was given a B.A. degree after he had won a second-class in the History Tripos in June 1903. He did not, however, take a leave of Trinity but remained there until October 1905 to work on a thesis which he hoped would gain him a Fellowship. Strachey was often ill and had to leave Cambridge repeatedly in order to recover from the palpitations that would subdue him.
The Cambridge period was a happy and productive one in Strachey's life. Among the freshmen
Freshman
A freshman or fresher is a first-year student in secondary school, high school, or college. The term first year can also be used as a noun, to describe the students themselves A freshman (US) or fresher (UK, India) (or sometimes fish, freshie, fresher; slang plural frosh or freshmeat) is a...
at Trinity there were three with whom Strachey soon became closely associated: Clive Bell
Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
, Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
and Saxon Sydney-Turner
Saxon Sydney-Turner
Saxon Arnold Sydney-TurnerMiddle name sometimes spelt, seemingly deliberately, as Arnoll was a member of the Bloomsbury Group who worked as a British civil servant throughout his life.-Early life:...
. Together with one undergraduate, A. J. Robertson, the five students formed a small society called "The Midnight Society" which, in the opinion of Clive Bell, formed the source of the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
. Strachey also belonged to the "Conversazione Society," the famous "Cambridge Apostles
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar....
" to which Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
, Hallam
Arthur Hallam
Arthur Henry Hallam was an English poet, best known as the subject of a major work, In Memoriam A.H.H., by his best friend and fellow poet, Alfred Tennyson...
, Maurice, and Sterling
John Sterling (author)
John Sterling , was a British author.He was born at Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute. He belonged to a family of Scottish origin which had settled in Ireland during the Cromwellian period...
had once belonged. The Cambridge period was also one in which Strachey was highly prolific in writing verse, much of which has been preserved and some of which was published at the time. At Cambridge Strachey also became acquainted with other men who would greatly influence him like G. Lowes Dickinson, John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, Walter Lamb (brother of painter Henry Lamb
Henry Lamb
Henry Taylor Lamb, MC, RA was an Australian-born British painter. A follower of Augustus John, he was a founder member of the Camden Town Group.Born in Adelaide, Australia, he was the son of Sir Horace Lamb FRS...
), George Mallory
George Mallory
George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, and G. E. Moore. Moore's philosophy, with its assumption that the summum bonum lies in achieving a high quality of humanity, in experiencing delectable states of mind, and in intensifying experience by contemplating great works of art, was a particularly important influence.
In the summer of 1903 Strachey applied for a position in the Education Department of the Civil Service. Even though the letters of recommendation written for him by those under whom he had studied showed that he was held in high esteem by those at Cambridge, he failed to get the appointment and decided to try for a fellowship in Trinity College. He spent from 1903 to 1905 writing his four hundred page thesis on Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...
, which wasn't very well received among the scientists of his time.
Beginnings of his career
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
and later to another house in the same street, he was assigned bed-sitters. But, as he was about to turn 30, family life started irritating him, and he took to traveling into the country more often, supporting himself by writing reviews and critical articles for The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
and other periodicals. About 1910-11 he spent some time at Saltsjöbaden
Saltsjöbaden
Saltsjöbaden is a locality situated in Nacka Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 8,937 inhabitants in 2005. It is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea.- History :...
, near Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. In this period he also lived for a while in a cottage on Dartmoor
Dartmoor
Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status, it covers .The granite upland dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The...
and about 1911-12 spent a whole winter at East Ilsley
East Ilsley
East Ilsley is a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire.It is situated at in West Berkshire, north of Newbury very close to the A34 road which bypasses the village....
on the Berkshire Downs
Berkshire Downs
The Berkshire Downs are a range of chalk downland hills in southern England, part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
. It would be during this time that he decided to grow a beard, which would become his most characteristic feature. On 9 May 1911, he would write to his mother:
"The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its color is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely effective, though some ill-bred persons have been observed to laugh. It is a red-brown of the most approved tint, and makes me look like a French decadent poet—or something equally distinguished."
In 1911, H. A. L. Fisher, onetime president of the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
and of the Board of Education, was in search of someone to write a short, one-volume survey of French literature. Fisher had read one of Strachey's reviews ("Two Frenchmen", Independent Review (1903)) and asked him to write a sketch of French literature in fifty thousand words, giving him J. W. Mackail's 1909 Latin Literature as a model. Landmarks in French Literature, dedicated to
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
of 1 February and sales, that by April 1914, had reached nearly 12,000 copies in the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, the book did not bring Strachey either the fame or the money which he so badly needed.
Eminent Victorians and later career
Soon after the publication of Landmarks, Strachey's mother and his friend Harry Norton each provided him with £100 which, together with earnings from the Edinburgh ReviewEdinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...
and from other periodicals, made it possible for him to rent a small, thatched cottage called "The Lacket" outside the village of Lockeridge, near Marlborough, Wiltshire. Here he established himself until 1916. Here also he wrote the first three parts of Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine...
.
Strachey's theory of biography was now fully developed and mature. He was being greatly influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels Strachey had been reading and reviewing as they appeared in Constance Garnett
Constance Garnett
Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature...
's translations. The influence of Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
would also be important on Strachey's later works, most notably on Elizabeth and Essex.
In 1916 Lytton Strachey was back in London living with his mother at 6 Belsize Park Gardens
Belsize Park
Belsize Park is an area of north-west London, England, in the London Borough of Camden.It is located north-west of Charing Cross and situated on the Northern Line. It borders Hampstead to the north and west, Kentish Town and Gospel Oak to the east, Camden Town to the south east and Primrose Hill...
, Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, where she had now moved. In the late autumn of 1917, however, his brother Oliver and his friends Harry Norton, John Maynard Keynes, and Saxon Sydney-Turner agreed to pay the rent on "The Mill House" at Tidmarsh
Tidmarsh
Tidmarsh is a village in the English county of Berkshire, on the A340 road between Pangbourne and Theale. It lies just north of the M4 motorway. It is south of Pangbourne, west of Reading and west of London....
, near Pangbourne
Pangbourne
Pangbourne is a large village and civil parish on the River Thames in the English county of Berkshire. Pangbourne is the home of the independent school, Pangbourne College.-Location:...
, Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
. After the success of Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine...
, published on 9 May 1918, he needed no help from the outside. He continued to live at Tidmarsh until the proceeds from Queen Victoria (1921) made it possible for him to buy Ham Spray House near Marlborough, Wiltshire, to which he moved in July 1924, and which was his home for the rest of his life.
At Cambridge he had become close friends with non-Apostles Thoby Stephen
Thoby Stephen
Julian Thoby Stephen , known as the Goth, was the elder brother of several members of the Bloomsbury Group, namely his sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf and his younger brother Adrian....
and Clive Bell
Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
, and they, together with sisters Vanessa
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...
and Virginia Stephen
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
(later Bell and Woolf respectively), eventually formed the Bloomsbury group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
. From 1904 to 1914 Strachey contributed book and drama reviews to The Spectator magazine.
During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
he applied for recognition as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
, but in the event was granted exemption from military service on health grounds. He spent much time with like-minded people such as Lady Ottoline Morrell
Lady Ottoline Morrell
The Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers such as Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H...
and the 'Bloomsberries'. His first great success, and his most famous achievement, was Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine...
(1918), a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. This work was followed in the same style by Queen Victoria (1921). He died of (then undiagnosed) stomach cancer at age 51 at his country house, Ham Spray House, at Ham
Ham, Wiltshire
Ham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire. In the Census 2001, the parish had a population of 152.- Location :Position: Nearby towns and cities: Hungerford, Marlborough, Newbury...
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
.
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, who also was part of the Bloomsbury group), it was not widely publicised until the late 1960s, in a biography by Michael Holroyd
Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, FRHS, FRSL is an English biographer.-Life:Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater....
. He had an unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington
Dora Carrington
Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey....
. She loved him and they lived together from 1917 until his death. In 1921 Carrington agreed to marry Ralph Partridge, not for love but to secure the three-way relationship. She committed suicide two months after Strachey's death. Strachey himself had been much more interested sexually in Partridge, as well as in various other young men. Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.
Cultural depictions
He was portrayed by Jonathan PryceJonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce, CBE is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s...
in the 1995 film Carrington
Carrington (film)
Carrington is a biographical film written and directed by Christopher Hampton about the life of the English painter Dora Carrington , who was known simply as "Carrington"...
. The film won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1996, and Pryce won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Strachey. Lytton Strachey was also portrayed by James Fleet
James Fleet
James Edward Fleet is an English actor. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the dim-witted Hugo Horton in the BBC situation comedy television series The Vicar of Dibley.-Personal life:Fleet...
in the film Al sur de Granada
Al sur de Granada
Al sur de Granada is a 2003 film written and directed by Fernando Colomo, based on the book by Gerald Brenan...
.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's husband Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
has said that in her experimental novel, The Waves
The Waves
- External links :* The Waves, at wikilivres.info...
, that "there is something of Lytton in Neville". Lytton is also said to be the inspiration behind the character of St. John Hirst in her novel The Voyage Out
The Voyage Out
The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran.Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of...
. Michael Holroyd
Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, FRHS, FRSL is an English biographer.-Life:Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater....
also describes Strachey as the inspiration behind Cedric Furber in Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
' The Self-Condemned. In Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
' novel The Apes of God
The Apes of God
The Apes of God is a 1930 novel by the British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis. It is a satire of London's contemporary literary and artistic scene....
, he is seen in the character of Matthew Plunkett, whom Holroyd describes as "a maliciously distorted and hilarious caricature of Lytton". In the Terminus Note in E.M. Forster's Maurice
Maurice (novel)
Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays, through university and beyond. It was written from 1913 onwards...
, Forster remarks that the Cambridge undergraduate Risley in the novel is based on Strachey.
Academic and biographies
- Landmarks in French Literature (1912)
- Eminent VictoriansEminent VictoriansEminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine...
: Cardinal Manning, Florence NightingaleFlorence NightingaleFlorence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
, Dr. ArnoldThomas ArnoldDr Thomas Arnold was a British educator and historian. Arnold was an early supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement...
, General GordonCharles George GordonMajor-General Charles George Gordon, CB , known as "Chinese" Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator....
(1918) - Queen Victoria (1921)
- Books and Characters (1922)
- Elizabeth and EssexEssexEssex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
: A Tragic History (1928) - Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (1931)
Posthumous publications
- 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) (ISBN 978-0-349-11812-3)
- The Really Interesting Question and Other Papers (ed. Paul Levy, 1972)
- The Shorter Strachey (ed. Michael Holroyd and Paul Levy, 1980)
- The Letters of Lytton Strachey (ed. Paul Levy, 2005) (ISBN 0-670-89112-6)
- Unpublished Works of Lytton Strachey: Early Papers (ed. Todd Avery, 2011)
Further reading
- Lytton Strachey, Michael Holroyd 1994, ISBN 0-09-933291-4 (paperback)
- Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity, Julie Anne Taddeo. Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 2002.
- Lytton Strachey: The Art of Biography, Desmond MacCarthy. "Sunday Times" 5 November 1933: 8.
- Lytton Strachey: his mind and art, Charles Richard Sanders. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.
- The Psychological Milieu of Lytton Strachey, Martin Kallich. NY: Bookman Associates, 1961.
- Nabokov and Strachey, G.Diment. "Comparative Literature Studies" 27.4 (1990): 285-97.
- Lytton Strachey, John Ferns. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.
- Holroyd/Strachey/Shaw: Art and Archives in Literary Biography, Harold Fromm. "The Hudson Review", 42.2 (1989): 201-221.
- Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, Millicent Bell. "The Biographer’s Art", ed. Jeffrey Meyers. London: Macmillan Press, 1989, 53-55.
- Lytton Strachey’s Elegant, Energetic Character Assassinations Destroyed for Ever the Pretensions of the Victorian Age to Moral Supremacy, Roy Hattersley. "New Statesman" 12 August 2002.
External links
- Lincoln Allison (Reader in Politics, University of Warwick) Colourful Eminence - Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians: a Retrospective Review Social Affairs Unit Web Review, July 2005
- S. P. Rosenbaum, ‘Strachey, (Giles) Lytton (1880–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006
- Charleston Farmhouse