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

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Strachey was born in London, the son of Lady Jane, a leading supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and Sir Richard Strachey, an engineer. He was the 11th of 13 children, 10 of whom survived until adulthood, including his sister Dorothy Strachey. From 1899 to 1905, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, having previously read history at the University of Liverpool. His membership in the "Apostles" Society while at Cambridge led him to form friendships with people such as Thoby Stephen, John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf and Clive Bell, and they, together with sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) eventually formed the intellectually-centered 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 of (then undiagnosed) stomach cancer at age 51 at his country house near Hungerford in Berkshire.

Though Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends, it was not publically revealed until (1967-8), in a biography 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, as well as various other young men) was portrayed in the film Carrington (1995). Jonathan Pryce won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Strachey in this film. Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.

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Strachey, Lytton - Twitter Search

#quote #citar Si esto se está muriendo, no creo que mucho de ella. - Lytton Strachey (attrib.), 1932
spanishfortune (Spanish Fortune) Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:10:02 -0000
#quote #citar Si esto se está muriendo, no creo que mucho de ella. - Lytton Strachey (attrib.), 1932
I decided to have a shave today as i was begining to look frightfully like lytton strachey!!
Chaucersfridge (Benjamin Taylor) Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:11:27 -0000
I decided to have a shave today as i was begining to look frightfully like lytton strachey!!

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