Strachey, (Giles) Lytton 1880-1932
English biographer

Born in London, the son of an Indian civil engineer and soldier, he was educated at Liverpool University, where he read history, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a book reviewer for the Spectator (1904-14), became a member of the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, and began his writing career as a critic with Landmarks in French Literature (1912), which shows clearly his affinities with Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve and his francophile sympathies. He was a conscientious objector during World War I. Eminent Victorians (1918) was a literary bombshell constituting, as it did, a vigorous, impertinent challenge to Victorian self-assurance. Its irony, mordant wit, and the ruthless pinpointing of foible that was his method of evoking character, transformed the genre. His later works include Queen Victoria (1921), Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928) and Characters and Commentaries (1933).

Bibliography: M Holroyd, Lytton Strachey (2 vols, 1967-68)