Lytton Strachey

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Dora Carrington: Lytton Strachey, 1916

Giles Lytton Strachey [ ˌlɪtən ˈstreɪtʃi ] (born March 1, 1880 in London , † January 21, 1932 in Ham, Wiltshire near Hungerford in Berkshire ) was a British biographer, critic and writer.

Life

Lytton Strachey was the son of an engineer and came from a large family. Closest to him throughout his life were his younger brother James and his cousin, the painter Duncan Grant , with whom he also had a love story. For Virginia Woolf, to whom he proposed marriage in 1909 despite his homosexuality, but had already revoked it the next day, he remained “the perfect friend”.

After starting a history degree at Liverpool University , he studied from 1899 to 1905 at Trinity College , Cambridge , where he came into contact with the Bloomsbury Group through friendships with John Maynard Keynes , Leonard Woolf , EM Forster and Clive Bell . There he met the two sisters Virginia Stephen (married Woolf) and Vanessa Stephen (married Bell) know. He spent many evenings in their hospitable homes with them and other “Bloomsberries” like Lady Ottoline Morrell .

Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, photograph by Ottoline Morrell, 1923

From 1904 to 1914 he wrote book and theater reviews for The Spectator magazine , published poetry, and wrote an important work of literary criticism, Landmarks in French Literature (1912).

During the First World War he refused military service for reasons of conscience.

His first major success and his best-known work was Eminent Victorians , published in 1918 , a collection of four short biographies of Victorian "heroes". With his typically sarcastic manner, he pointed out their human weaknesses and what he believed to be the hypocrisy at the center of Victorian morality . In 1921, Queen Victoria , written in a similar style, followed .

He died in January 1932 in the Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, which he bought in 1924.

Slim, dark, with a falsetto voice and a dreaded dry sense of humor, Lytton Strachey was one of the most fascinating personalities in the Bloomsbury Group. EM Forster set him a monument as Viscount Risley in his novel Maurice .

Strachey had an unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington , with whom he entered into a lifelong bond. She loved him, but he was also interested in her husband, Ralph Partridge. It was a ménage à trois that was filmed in 1995 by Christopher Hampton as Carrington (German title: Carrington - Liebe bis in den Tod ) with Jonathan Pryce (as Strachey) and Emma Thompson (as Carrington).

Works

  • Landmarks in French Literature , 1912
  • Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning , Florence Nightingale , Dr. Arnold , General Gordon , London 1918
    • German excerpts in spirit and adventure. Seven portraits , Berlin 1931/32, power and piety: Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning. Two portraits from the Victorian period , Berlin 1936, and General Gordons Ende , Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937834-06-0
  • Queen Victoria , 1921 (German Queen Victoria , Berlin 1925)
  • Books and Characters , 1922 (German in excerpts in Spirit and Adventure. Seven portraits , Berlin 1931/32)
  • Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History , 1928
    • in German: Elisabeth and Essex. A tragic history , Berlin 1929; several editions, most recently in Zurich 1966
  • Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays , 1931 (German in excerpts in Spirit and Adventure. Seven portraits , Berlin 1931/32)
  • Characters and Commentaries (ed.James Strachey, 1933)
  • Spectatorial Essays (ed.James Strachey, 1964)
  • Ermyntrude and Esmeralda , 1969
  • Lytton Strachey by Himself: A Self Portrait . Edited by Michael Holroyd , 1971
  • The Really Interesting Question and Other Papers . Ed. Paul Levy, 1972
  • The Letters of Lytton Strachey . Ed. Paul Levy, 2005
  • Life, a mistake. Eight eccentrics , Berlin 1999. ISBN 3-8031-1186-2

Machining

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ham , british-history.ac.uk
  2. ↑ Michael Holroyd: A marriage proposal . In: Christine Frick-Gerke (ed.): Inspiration Bloomsbury. The Virginia Woolf Circle . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 61ff.

Web links

Commons : Lytton Strachey  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Strachey, Lytton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strachey, Giles Lytton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British biographer, critic and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1932
Place of death Ham, Wiltshire