http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/03/14/bostrachey14.xml. 199-200. It had a lot of detail, but the writing style was a bit dry and old-fashioned (the book was written a while ago). Lytton Strachey, the eighth of the ten surviving children of Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Strachey (1817–1908) and his wife, Jane Grant Strachey (1840–1928), was born at Stowey House, Clapham Common, on 1st March 1880. ↑ The Letters of Lytton Strachey, ed. Two recent monographs point to a possible revival of interest in Strachey,[14] and more are needed to illuminate this historian who was able to distill in his writings the essence of literary modernism. Strachey uses satire to present his view of Manning as a man of worldly ambition. ', and 'As usual, it struck me that letters were the only really satisfactory form of literature. Strachey's satire in Eminent Victorians is pervasive. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net It was certainly not written in the style of a Strachey biography. ON LYTTON STRACHEY'S PERSONALITY AND STYLE "The rises and falls in the stock market of literature deserve more study than they have received." Michael Holroyd (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 25. [12] Strachey also leaves behind a collection of biographical essays entitled Portraits in Miniature (1931) and many critical essays on literature, some of which (including a long, unfinished article on Othello written near the end of his life) are collected in the posthumous Characters and Commentaries published by James Strachey in 1933. Overall, in this extract of ‘Eminent Victorians’, Strachey explores the effect of social influence on the female identity, whilst also considers various consequences for future female liberation: whilst the prose might be read as a celebration of 20th century female freedom, it is made evident, through characterisation of ‘Florence Nightingale’, that the author is concerned with a future in which the … ↑ Strachey, Eminent Victorians (Continuum, 2002), p. 3. World War I began soon after Strachey’s return from a tour of France and Italy, and his resistance to the war effort is legendary. The Project Gutenberg eBook, Landmarks in French Literature, by G. Lytton Strachey This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. ↑ Ibid., p. 4. His choice has been determined by simple motives of convenience and of art. It was in this period that he grew close to Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf) and her sister Vanessa, proving a valuable support for the family after the death of their brother Thoby. Strachey’s exploration of Elizabeth’s love affairs, which has been read through the prism of his own sex life, also shows Freud’s influence on his understanding of sexuality (his brother James was the general editor for the still definitive Standard Edition of Freud’s works). se of semantics iis doen Throughout the prose, Strachey presents the Virginia Woolf is considered to be one of the greatest twentieth century novelists and … Lytton Strachey Improves His Style, 1904-22 CHARLES RICHARD SANDERS" THREE of Lytton Strachey's books are collections of writings first published in periodicals. He does in 100 pages what other biographers seem to fail to do in 1000 pages in capturing the essence of his subject's personality, the zeitgeist of the time in which they lived and so forth. Giles Lytton Strachey was born on March 1, 1880, at Stowey House, Clapham Common, to General Richard Strachey, a former colonial administrator who had spent much of his life in India, and his wife Jane, a passionate woman whose love of conversation and knowledge of French literature were important influences on the young Lytton. In the five years after leaving Cambridge, Strachey lived with his family, first at Lancaster Gate, then at their new home in Hampstead. He later remembered life there as a combination of the bourgeois Victorian world of his parents, the decaying “aristocratic tradition” of their ancestors, and the “intellectualism and eccentricity” that formed a unique part of the “Strachey character.”[1] The book presents brief life histories of four Victorian icons: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon. Formal style is a style of language use for the purpose of uniformity. Lytton Strachey. Strachey, Lytton, 1880-1932 Title: Lytton Strachey Collection 1885-1957 Dates: 1885-1957: Extent: 5 boxes (2.08 linear feet) Abstract: This collection documents the … Discuss. Lytton Strachey was an English biographer and critic, whose literary legacy includes the biography of Queen Victoria, Cardinal Manning, General Gordon and other notable figures. Lytton Strachey's opening of a discussion of Restoration Comedies ( Literary Essays , p. 47) is an apt remark also in his own case, which is an example of the booms and slumps of the literary market. MsEffie’s List of Prose Essay Prompts for Advanced Placement® English Literature Exams, 1970-2018* *Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website. In Elizabeth and Essex (1928), he dramatizes the life of a subject from an earlier historical period, using his prodigious imagination to compensate for the comparative lack of information about Elizabeth. View Text_ Lytton Strachey_ Florence Nightingale_SecondAttachment.docx from IR 2A at National Defense University, Islamabad. In 1902, he was elected to the Apostles, the secret Cambridge Conversazione Society through which he met G.E. ↑ Conrad, Lord Jim (London: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 63. Strachey says that he has attempted to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye. One of the leading members of the Bloomsbury group, he became known for his ironic prose style and sense of rupture with the Victorian past, which helped to define English literary modernism. We invite you to learn more about us, peruse the odious archives, and of course, submit an entry. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. Paul Levy (London: Viking Press, 2005). Strachey's satire in Eminent Victorians is pervasive. Like all of Strachey's work, it is a gem of English prose style: sometimes mordant, often subtly sarcastic, but always spot on. The characteristics of the pre-Johnsonian prose style—the style which Dryden first established and Swift brought to perfection—are obvious enough. Although he expressed it in characteristically flamboyant terms (according to one story he said, “I am the civilization for which you are fighting”), Strachey was actually quite serious in his opposition. Strachey had been impressed by the “strange power of ridicule” that he found in the prose of Dostoevesky, and in Eminent Victorians his tone is mischievously satirical as he exposes the generational hypocrisies that he felt had led to the war. Their passionate affair continued for five years, until Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601. Lytton Strachey's ironic attitude Lytton Strachey, an English biographer, critic and essayist, is best known for his ironic attitude towards the subject of his biographical studies. [13] One of the most famous and tortured romances in history - between Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - began in 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was nineteen. Few writers have provoked as much excessive praise and scornful condemnation as English poet Rupert Brooke. A year later, he met and fell in love with Ralph Partridge, a distinguished veteran of the war, and Partridge married Carrington in 1921 in order to maintain the love triangle with Strachey. Strachey’s second biographical work, Queen Victoria (1921) is a more traditional Life, though still playfully ironic at points. These are Books and Charac-ters (1922), Portraits in Miniature (193i), and Characters and Commentaries (1933). There are some principles from Strachey’s preface that biographers love to quote. Share. [8] The book conveyed the sense of a necessary rupture with the past that was shared by Strachey’s modernist friends and contemporaries. ... and for his book Style , an acclaimed guide to recognising and writing good prose. Selections from the correspondence are available online from the London Telegraph: ↑ Barry Spurr, Literary-Critical Analysis of the Complete Prose Works of Lytton Strachey (Lewiston, NY : E. Mellen Press, 1995) and Zsuzsa Rawlinson, The Sphinx of Bloomsbury: the Literary Essays and Biographies of Lytton Strachey (Budapest : Akademiai Kiado, 2006). The long-awaited publication of Strachey’s letters in 2005 also brought to light the sexual relationship with Roger Senhouse that occupied his final years. Strachey’s targets of irony were evangelicalism, liberalism, humanitarianism, education and imperialism. Finally, Strachey calls into question the heroism of General Gordon’s death during the Mahdist Revolt in the Sudan; far from seeming a great strategist, the military commander parades across the pages as a tempestuous zealot, “a fighter, an enthusiast, a bold adventurer.” Strachey’s critical accounts shocked his Edwardian audience, but contemporary readers will find them fascinating for their candid portrayals … Lytton Strachey is an amusing, arch, and eloquent writer. Introduction . Satire is the use of wit and humor to ridicule or show scorn of a subject. [7] Chief among these, for Strachey, is the pious Christianity shared by all four of his subjects, and the book has been read (by Freud, among others) as an extended argument against religion. Finally, from 1899 to 1905 he attended Trinity College at Cambridge, where he met future Bloomsburians Clive Bell, E.M. Forster, Thoby Stephen, and Leonard Woolf. Although the works are in the form of prose, yet they are closer to poetry, ... John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, T.S Eliot and Lytton Strachey. 1. For example, according to Strachey, Manning was attracted to the Oxford Movement not because of the truth of its religious ideas but because it elevated the clergyman to a higher status: This Study Guide consists of approximately 62 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - EVERYONE knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale. [2] In 1897, Strachey entered Liverpool University College, where Sir Walter Raleigh (the husband of one of his cousins) was the King Alfred Professor of English Literature. One hundred years ago Lytton Strachey brought out Eminent Victorians, four novella-length biographical essays, composed in burnished, exquisitely ironic prose, that took gleeful aim at … Apart from his brilliant, lapidary style, Strachey’s great work amounts to what a lot of the other work of Bloomsbury amounts to: a big literary temper tantrum. It is less personal than informal style and it is used for professional and academic purposes like formal letters or documents used in different professions, format of assignments and thesis and formal style of hosting on the stage. The conversation at Lancaster Gate was famously lively and intelligent, but Strachey found the atmosphere oppressive. Perhaps Lytton Strachey was the first to create "the new biography," not wrapping his subjects in flowery adjectives as was the style of his times, but instead skewering them with … His poetry, with its unabashed patriotism and graceful lyricism, was revered in a country that was yet to feel the devastating effects of two world wars. Lytton Strachey is similar to these writers: E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, F. L. Lucas and more. With Moore’s emphasis on aesthetic experience and personal relations as intellectual support, Strachey promoted the homosexuality that thrived among the Apostles as part of a subversive personal creed. 192-199. Abstract ‘You don’t know how superb one feels — writing a real book, with real chapters’, Lytton Strachey wrote to Maynard Keynes in the summer of 1904 (MH/LS, p. 223).This last, still unpublished book of Bloomsbury’s early Edwardian years is as important in its way to the Group’s literary history as The Court Theatre, Euphrosyne, or Where Angels Fear to Tread. ↑ Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography (London: Chatto and Windus, 1994), pp. It also didn't have as much detail of her life after Prince Albert died, which was unfortunate. Eminent Victorians has been on my `to read' list for about 20 yrs, and I'm so glad I finally got around to it. Strachey’s personal life was characterized by the same irreverence and unconventionality that mark his prose. This edition includes Holroyd's commentary on the process of preparing the biography and working with the people who knew Lytton Strachey. Written only 20 years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era. TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES. [3] In 1910, Strachey was commissioned to write Landmarks in French Literature (1912), a clear and concise introduction to French literary history. London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery (available through Yale University’s Digital Resources Collection). Strachey and Senhouse carried out a number of experiments with sado-masochism, including the bizarre mock-crucifixion described in one of Strachey’s letters. ), English biographer and critic who opened a new era of biographical writing at the close of World War I. Giles Lytton Strachey (/ ˈ dʒ aɪ l z ˈ l ɪ t ən ˈ s t r eɪ tʃ i /; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic.. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians, he is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. It was also in this year that he met Henry Lamb (the object of one of Strachey’s frequent infatuations) and Lady Ottoline Morrell, the patroness of D.H. Lawrence and many other modernist writers. ↑ Pericles Lewis, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 113. In 1884, the family moved to 69 Lancaster Gate, in Central London, where they lived for much of Strachey’s childhood. In his Preface, Strachey echoes the modernist assumption that the author can present character only in fragmentary form, and he expresses this idea in a metaphor that recalls Joseph Conrad’s Marlow novels with their attention to chiaroscuro: “If he is wise, [the biographer] will attack his subject in unexpected places … he will shoot a sudden, revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined.”[9] This understanding of the biographer as an imaginative interpreter casts doubt on Strachey’s more orthodox statement on the next page that “it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case.”[10] Taken together, the statements almost seem designed to provoke a reaction like Marlow’s as he describes the trial of Lord Jim: “Facts! Strachey's tone throughout tends to be mocking and half-amused, as he chronicles the curious antics of his subjects. He uses it to diminish not only his biographical subjects and a host of minor figures, but also many of their principle beliefs, especially those in the area of religion. His purpose is to illustrate rather than to explain. The war was an important influence on Eminent Victorians (1918), the work for which Strachey is best known. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. Perry Meisel discusses this discrepancy in his Myth of the Modern (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987), pp. It's very complete, and I can not imagine it ever being superseded. Categories Lytton Strachey, Prose, Short Questions Answers Tags #Literature #Short Answers #Eminent Victorian #Lytton Strachey #Florence Nightingale #Prose #Biographies Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical bad novel. He is ready to poke fun wherever he can. Verified Purchase. She declined the offer, and it was a relieved Strachey who suggested that she marry Leonard Woolf. [5] Before he was judged medically unfit for military service, he applied for an exemption on the basis of his belief “that the whole system by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force is profoundly evil; and that, so far as I am concerned, I should be doing wrong to take any active part in it.”[6] Topic. Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a historian, literary critic, and Bloomsbury wit whose ironic prose style and sense of rupture with the Victorian past helped to define English literary modernism. I felt when … Lytton Strachey, in full Giles Lytton Strachey, (born March 1, 1880, London—died Jan. 21, 1932, Ham Spray House, near Hungerford, Berkshire, Eng. Adopting an irreverent attitude to the past and especially to the monumental life-and-letters volumes of Victorian biography, Strachey proposed to write lives … ↑ Lytton Strachey by Himself : A Self-Portrait, ed. While his work has not received the attention devoted to the literary figures of his generation, it remains essential for modernist criticism. He claims a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is … ↑ For more on the influence of Dostoevsky, see Paul Levy’s introduction to Eminent Victorians: the Definitive Edition (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. xxix. The masterful narrative techniques used in Eminent Victorians, which include striking metaphors, inverted clichés, experimentation with free indirect discourse and deft management of minor characters, make it a literary as much as a historical classic. Satire is the use of wit and humor to ridicule or show scorn of a subject. The endnotes are entertaining and necessary to the text. In 1908, Strachey even proposed to Virginia, who would later portray him as St. John Hirst in The Voyage Out (1915). Strachey’s peculiar relationship with Carrington lasted (with many mutually excused infidelities) for the rest of their lives, and has become familiar to a broader audience through Michael Holroyd’s biography of Strachey and Christopher Hampton’s 1995 film, Carrington. ↑ Freud wrote to Strachey, “As a historian … you show that you are steeped in the spirit of psychoanalysis” (Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, p. 615). This revelation corrected the traditional view that Strachey’s sex life was confined largely to the realm of fantasy. Strachey writes: “Beneath her cool and calm demeanour lurked fierce and passionate fires…the high deliberation in the scope of the capacious brow, the sign of power in the dominating curve of the thin nose, and the traces of a harsh and dangerous temper – something peevish,something mocking, and yet something precise – the small and delicate mouth” (p.137). Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English writer and politician.He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. LYTTON STRACHEY LONDON First published May 1922. Lytton Strachey. Moore and Bertrand Russell. Lewis quotes from Samuel Hynes’s A War Imagined. Lamb and Morrell introduced him to a bohemian world beyond Bloomsbury.[4]. Much talked about, but not much acted on. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Eminent Victorians. Lady Strachey directed Lytton’s unconventional education, which included four years at Parkstone School (1889-1893) and two at Leamington (1894-1896), a semi-public school where he remembered being bullied for his spindly physique and experiencing homosexual desire for the first time. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succour the afflicted, the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her goodness the dying soldier’s couch—the vision is familiar to all. In one sentence he will string together a series of effusive Victorian adjectives, suddenly to be concluded with a word that's surprisingly modern, terse, daring, even breathtaking. He uses it to diminish not only his biographical subjects and a host of minor figures, but also many of their principle beliefs, especially those in the area of religion. 17 quotes from Lytton Strachey: 'A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile', 'It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet. Amongst his brother and sisters were James Strachey, Oliver Strachey and Philippa Strachey. Strachey died of stomach cancer on January 21, 1932. What is formal style? He's a classical writer who takes risks. Handsome, charming, and talented, Brooke was a national hero even before his death in 1915 at the age of 27. In 1917, he moved into a house at Tidmarsh with the painter Dora Carrington. Giles Lytton Strachey was born on March 1, 1880, at Stowey House, Clapham Common, to General Richard … They give one the facts so amazingly, don't they? Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a historian, literary critic, and Bloomsbury wit whose ironic prose style and sense of rupture with the Victorian past helped to define English literary modernism. Strachey's tone throughout tends to be mocking and half-amused, as he chronicles the curious antics of his subjects. They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!”[11] Cambridge Conversazione Society through which he met G.E [ 13 ] Strachey died of stomach cancer on January 21 1932..., Lytton Strachey is similar to these writers: E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, L.... General Gordon the endnotes are entertaining and necessary to the realm of fantasy revelation corrected the traditional that... Not much acted on ( Cambridge UP, 2007 ), Portraits Miniature! Pericles Lewis, the secret Cambridge Conversazione Society through which he met G.E until Essex was beheaded treason. One the facts so amazingly, do n't they s preface that biographers love quote... 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And humor to ridicule or show scorn of a subject confined largely to the.! To the literary figures of his generation, it remains essential for criticism. The biography and working with the painter Dora Carrington and of art Nightingale_SecondAttachment.docx from IR 2A at Defense. Eloquent writer to ridicule or show scorn of a Strachey biography poet Rupert Brooke provoked as much excessive and! Intelligent, but not much acted on facts so amazingly, do n't they the greatest twentieth century and... Five years, until Essex was beheaded for treason in 1601 sado-masochism, including bizarre! The age of 27 not imagine it ever being superseded his view of Manning as a man of ambition!: Penguin Books, 1989 ), p. 3 Cambridge UP, 2007 ), p. 113 Moody...
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