Lytton Strachey

Giles Lytton Strachey ( born March 1, 1880 in London, † January 21, 1932 at Hungerford in Berkshire ) was a British biographer, critic and writer.

Life

He was the son of an engineer and came from a large family. The next time he stood his life, his younger brother James and his cousin, the painter Duncan Grant, with whom he shared a love story. For Virginia Woolf, whom he had, despite his homosexuality in 1909 made ​​a marriage proposal, but already revoked the next day, he was " the perfect boyfriend ".

After the beginning of a history degree at the University of Liverpool from 1899 to 1905 he studied 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 know (married Bell). With them and other " Bloom Berries " as Lady Ottoline Morrell, he spent many evenings in their hospitable houses.

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

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

His first big success and his most famous work was published in 1918 Eminent Victorians, a collection of four short biographies of Victorian 'hero'. With his typical sarcastic manner, he pointed to her human weaknesses and what he considered the hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian morality. 1921 was followed by the Queen Victoria wrote in a similar style.

He died at his country house in Berkshire.

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

Strachey had received an unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington, with a lifelong covenant. She loved him, but he was also interested in her husband Ralph Partridge. It was a ménage à trois, which was filmed in 1995 as Carrington with Emma Thompson.

Works

  • Landmarks in French Literature, 1912 Excerpts in French havens: Voltaire, Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse and Stendhal, Wagenbach, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8031-1209-5
  • German excerpts in spirit and adventure. Seven portraits, Berlin 1931/32, power and piety: Florence Nightingale, Cardinal Manning. Two images from the Victorian era, Berlin 1936, and General Gordon's end, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937834-06-0
  • In German: Elizabeth and Essex. A tragic history, Berlin 1929; several edition, last Zurich 1966

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