Strachey, Lytton, << STRAY chee, LIHT uhn >> (1880-1932), was a British biographer, essayist, and literary critic. His best-known works are biographies—Eminent Victorians (1918) and Queen Victoria (1921). Eminent Victorians is a group of sketches about four famous figures of Victorian England—the educator Thomas Arnold, General Charles Gordon, Cardinal Henry Manning, and the nurse Florence Nightingale. He later published Elizabeth and Essex (1928) and Portraits in Miniature (1931). Stressing personality over political context, Strachey’s sketches are written in an unorthodox, ironic style that advanced the craft of biography as aesthetic portraiture.
Giles Lytton Strachey was born on March 1, 1880, in London. He formed most of his ideas and lifelong friendships while studying at Cambridge University from 1899 to 1903. Strachey gained a place in the center of London literary life through the wit, elegance, and skeptical nature of his personality and writings. Strachey and his Cambridge friends formed the nucleus of what became known as the Bloomsbury Group (see Bloomsbury Group). This group included some of the leading English intellectuals of the day. Strachey died on Jan. 21, 1932.
