Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), British biographer and literary critic, who helped sweep away the ponderous, solemn Victorian approach to the writing of biography, replacing it with a witty and impressionistic style that was widely imitated.

Born in London, Strachey studied at the University of Cambridge, where he associated with other intellectuals, including Clive Bell, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes, who later became leading figures in the Bloomsbury Group. Making his home in London, Strachey wrote literary criticism for the Spectator. A great admirer of the French classics, particularly for their wit and urbanity, he did much to bring them to the attention of the English, especially in his Landmarks in French Literature (1912). His Eminent Victorians (1918)—short biographies of Florence Nightingale, Henry Edward Manning, and others—won him widespread recognition. In this work, instead of using the conventional method of detailed chronological narration, he carefully selected his facts to present highly personal portraits of his subjects. His aim, he declared in the preface, was to cast “a sudden revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined.” In the process he occasionally sacrificed truth, but the result—polished, malicious, and lively—brought him many readers. Strachey employed the same approach in his Queen Victoria (1921), Elizabeth and Essex (1928), and Portraits in Miniature (1931). His critical articles were collected in Books and Characters (1922) and in the posthumous Characters and Commentaries (1933).