BIOGRAPHIES
Last update: November 11 th (Giles) Lytton Strachey
(1880 - 1932) U.K.
Biographer, writer, critic Born to upper-class parents descended from aristocrats of the English Renaissance, young Lytton grew up in a large household of many siblings and relatives. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a member of the "Apostles" and a friend of G.E. Moore, M. Keynes, and L. Woolf. He was thereafter a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group, advocating both in words and life its faith in tolerance in personal relationship. He wrote the flamboyant Landmarks in French Literature (1912), but won fame and set a vogue by his wittily mocking treatement in Eminent Victorians (1918) of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and general Gordon. By adopting an irreverent, and often pornographic, attitude to the past, Lytton Strachey opened a new era of biographical writing. Strachey was a rival, and at the same time in love, with Maynard Keynes, about whom he wrote: Yet listen - you are mine in his despite,
Who shall dare say his triumph mine prevents? | |
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