Lytton Strachey Totally Explained

Everything about Lytton Strachey totally explained

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. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Life and career

Youth

Strachey was born on March 1, 1880, at Stowey House, Clapham Common, London, the fifth son and the eleventh child of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey, an officer in the colonial British armed forces, and his 2nd 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 the Richard Stracheys 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'd receive the best education possible in order to be "enlightened". By 1887 he'd begun the study of French, a culture he'd admire during his entire life. 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 where 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'd be victim of savage bullying. Strachey did eventually adapt to the school's life, eventually becoming one of the school's 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 17, 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 like it was 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.

Cambridge

Strachey was admitted as Pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, on September 30, 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'd 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.
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 man 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 1911, H. A. L. Fisher, onetime president of the British Academy and of the Board of Education, was in the 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. each provided him with £100 which, together with earning from the Edinburgh Review and from other periodicals, made it possible for him to rent a small, thatched cottage called "The Lacket" outside the village of Lockridge, near Marlborough in Wiltshire. Here he established himself until 1916. Here also he wrote the first three parts of Eminent Victorians.
Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005. His letters reveal that, in keeping with the mores of the times, his affection for males extended to those of adolescent age. His first love affair had been with the young artist Duncan Grant, and later in life his letters reflect his appreciation for the young: "Girlish rapture alternates with disgust and disillusionment as the ravishing boys who troop through these pages ("eyelashes a foot long and a dream of a face") regularly grow up, broaden out, sprout beards and settle down to marry and/or sleep with women."

Cultural depictions

He was portrayed by Jonathan Pryce 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.

Bibliography

Academic and biographies

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)
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 978-0349118123)
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)

Further Information

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