Lytton Strachey: The New Biography

by Michael Holroyd

"A triumphant success. . . . His prose is confident, clear . . . occasionally perfect." ―Dennis Potter, The Times (London) "It is impossible to suppose that this ‘Life' will ever be superseded . . . the best literary biography to appear for many years."―John Rothenstein, New York Times "Written with vivacity and scrupulousness. . . . [Michael Holroyd] has a great novelist's sense of the obstinate mystery of the human person."―George Steiner, The New Yorker 30 b/w and 4 color photographs

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History, Literature

600 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Michael Holroyd is the author of acclaimed biographies of George Bernard Shaw, the painter Augustus John, Lytton Strachey, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, as well as two memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. Knighted for his services to literature, he is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature and the only nonfiction writer to have been awarded the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His previous book, A Strange Eventful History, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/michae...

Reviews

[Andrew Rostan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest biographies ever written.
And one which only gets better and richer upon rereading.
Strachey should be more of an icon than he is. He was one of the greatest prose stylists who ever lived...and more importantly for the world at large, a proud gay man and conscientious objector when the former was a crime and the latter might as well have been.
The quality that Holroyd brings out most in this book is one which I find all too rarely in biographies...a need for friendship. He documents the shifting nature of Strachey's lifelong friendships, most notably his bond with his onetime fiancee Virginia Woolf, the establishment of new ones, the breaking of old ones, and most of all, his efforts as ceaseless as his writing to keep a stable network of people he truly cared for around him.
It was the antidote in some ways to his string of unhappy love affairs, but moreover, it spoke to a need for something human he could count on while surrounded by the uncertainties of the world. As a picture of a man dealing with insecurities in a realistic way, it may never be equalled.
Holroyd's research is impeccable, his own writing flawless and perfectly constructed, his use of quotation judicious, and his tone veering from witty to heartbreaking at all the right moments.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an extremely well-written, well-organized, enjoyable biography. It's very complete, and I can not imagine it ever being superseded. It was certainly not written in the style of a Strachey biography. The endnotes are entertaining and necessary to the text. This edition includes Holroyd's commentary on the process of preparing the biography and working with the people who knew Lytton Strachey. I envy him his access to these remarkable people, including Frances Partridge, James Strachey, and Duncan Grant. But I do wish that he had commented even briefly on the film, Carrington, that purports to have been based on Holroyd's biography. I recommend it for anyone with the patience to trawl through the intricacies of Bloomsbury and Lytton Strachey's eventful (Byzantine?) life.

[Mitchell Capps · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was, in preparing to live abroad, the collateral beauty of spending some time in the town where I grew up. With that, I was pleased to meet up with old friends including my high school English teacher. On our second meeting, he gifted me with a 800 page volume on the life of Lytton Strachey who I’d never heard of before. There was no explanation as to why (typical of his eccentric manner).

I still don’t know why. Maybe it’s because he knows I write and that I’ve not conventional success as a writer that he would parallel me with a man who sat at a literary grindstone well into his thirties before having any measure of reward. I doubt it. I think it was more to do with our discussions about open-minded literary communities.

In any case, the book was massively entertaining. A biography of this length is bound to warm you to a character. It’s that measure of time. I think Lytton would not have liked me, but I like him. It was fascinating to read so detailed a portrait of a different time and place with its unimportant ins and outs of days. Book to book, tea to tea, one European excursion following the next.

Life is a wonderfully strange tale. Here is one of its magnificent entries.

[Elizabeth McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading this for the entire autumn and it became a companion. A truly good biography! Wittily written, reassuringly human. Well researched but not at all stuffy. Made 1000 pages of illness and dejection feel enjoyable.

[Nic Rowan]

Incredibile—worthy of its subject.

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over a thousand pages about one of the Bloomsbury greats and I loved every single one of them. Extremely moving at the end but I knew to expect it. Holroyd is a giant in himself - I would love to know how much work went into this as his research and presentation are just impeccable. I could have done with lots more photographs but that's just me. I finished it very reluctantly as I knew I would miss the whole cast. An absolutely masterclass in writing biography as well as the perfect treat for Bloomsbury fans.

[Mary L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of you have probably seen the movie "Carrington" and I agree it was grand. However, that should not keep you from reading this biograpy of Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd from which the screen play was written. The book gives a much more elaborate potrait of Mr. Strachey and the Bloomsbury group. You will enjoy every nuance and be sorry when you come to the last page.

[Avril · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely astonishing biography. This volume is over 1000 pages long, and there is a second volume that deals with Strachey’s writings, but the length didn’t seem at all excessive and the interest was maintained right to the end.

The first version of this book was published in 1967, over fifty years ago, which makes it more admirable that Holroyd decided, as he said, to treat Lytton’s homosexuality and his relationships as matter of factly as if he’d been heterosexual. Given that male homosexuality was only decriminalised in that same year, 1967, I think that was a brave decision.

Goodness, the Bloomsberries lived strange emotional lives! I am exhausted simply reading about Lytton’s love life, especially when Carrington’s is added to it.

[Kidlitter]

Holroyd's commitment to research, interest in the social and cultural issues of Strachey's era, and feelings of admiration, sympathy and understanding for his subject are conveyed on every page of this immense biography. Even Bloomsbury fetishists will learn from this book and though there are head-clutching moments where reading this book feels like walking with Strachey through London, reading alongside him in a country garden, or accompanying him to yet another society party, it strangely doesn't feel too much. What an odd, erudite man he was but strangely, I missed him keenly at the end. and suspect I always shall. Holroyd, you wizard you!

[Ivar Kjellberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavily detailed (god the details !) But also moving, since we follow Strachey and his entourage for more than 50 years, this biography can for sure be considered the final one on Lytton Strachey.
Holroyd manages to bring those characters back to life thanks to letters , books, comments.... and if you're interested in Bloomsbury, Virginia Woolf... this is for you.

[John D. Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a famous biography and of course worth reading but, unless you are a Bloomsbury obsessive, it is two or three times longer than it needs to be. Long stretches of my Kindle version had an odd flaw in which the word "the" was replaced by "die." I mean hundreds of times.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to try hard to keep going with this much acclaimed biography. I just didn't find the characters involved or their antics very interesting and for someone like me who is not particularly interested in The Bloomsbury Group it was far too long.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating (and hefty) read into the life of a truly fascinating man. Intellectual, perceptive, lost, found, curious, and everything in between. A life and a half.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography and a very good exploration of his friends in the Bloomsbury set.

[Connor H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monument of 20th century biography

[Duncan M Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be one of the best biographies I have read. The book appeals because of the subject and my interest in Bloomsbury but Holroyd has written a book that reads as easily as a novel. A masterpiece.

[Joy H.]

Added 1/15/12.
I did not read this book but I watched the film (via streaming from Netflix) adapted from the book, Lytton Strachey: The New Biography by Michael Holroyd.

The movie was: "Carrington" (1995) and starred Emma Thompson & Jonathan Pryce:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112637/
"The story of the relationship between painter Dora Carrington and author Lytton Strachey in a World War One England of cottages and countryside. Although platonic due to Strachey's homosexuality, the relationship was nevertheless a deep and complicated one."

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Car...
"Pryce won the Best Actor Award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival for his work in this absorbingly nuanced character study written and directed by esteemed playwright Christopher Hampton."

Emma Thompson was at her loveliest in this film.

About the strange love relationships in the movie, critic Roger Ebert said:
"Everyone in the Bloomsbury crowd (Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant) were known for freedom, even recklessness, in their choices of romantic partners. A diagram of their love affairs would look like an underground system where every train stopped at every station."
FROM: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/p...

The review by James Berardinelli was excellent:
Excerpts:
"The movie is historically accurate, but its focus is less on the events of the time than on the relationship between the principals."
"Carrington is divided into six chapters, most of are named after the men who float in and out of the title character's life. Of course, Strachey is there all the time, a constant supportive and loving presence. In one segment, Dora loses her virginity to ardent suitor Mark Gertler (Rufus Sewell). In another, she marries Ralph Partridge (Steven Waddington), primarily because Strachey is attracted to him. This leads to a bizarre triangle where only one relationship is consummated. Then there's an tryst with Partridge's best friend, Gerald Brenan (Samuel West), and a later affair which results in an unwanted pregnancy."
FROM: http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_t...

The choreography and scenery were beautiful.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Holroyd's biography was clearly a revelation whose moment had come. The Swinging 60's saw in Bloomsbury's adamant rejection of convention and in its polymorphous carryings-on a model for its own liberation. Mr. Holroyd's book, along with Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf, was responsible for igniting the mania for Bloomsbury that has fueled an apparently inexhaustible stream of memoirs, published letters and diaries, plays and academic treatises excavating the private lives of Vita and Virginia, Leonard, Vanessa, Clive, Duncan, Maynard, Carrington, Roger and a host of minor satellites, children and grandchildren.

Michael Holroyd has, in his new version of "Lytton Strachey," interlarded a great deal of this new material, along with disclosures that he says he was prevented from making in the earlier because many of Lytton's friends and lovers were still alive. In some cases, he had the disturbing experience of finding that he had misread events or relationships.

Long books like this can be hard to read, one keeps putting them down and doing something else and procrastination over a book one is actually engrossed in and enjoying is odd but that is the case with this book. I am pleased to have had the chance to reread it and part of why I took my time and didn't skim and underlined and researched bits was...at my age....I am unlikely to read it again so had to savor it this time.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

My, I couldn't wait for this book to end. It was like being stuck on a train with a bunch of amorous college students for weeks. Love triangles weren't enough--quadrangles and other angles multiplied. A loved B. B loved C. C loved A. Sometimes C loved A and B. And on and on. I totally lost touch with Strachey and his writing in the book.

Everyone else who reviewed the book seemed to love it. Alas.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by Holroyd (2 volumes) is more information about Strachey than any one person could ever use, but it's well-written and appealing. It was the basis for the film Carrington, I think. Modernists, modernists, modernists! It's like E Entertainment Television in book form, for modernist lovers.

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to live where lives are lived read this book. It comes with the highest credentials and is utterly captivating, enthralling. I do congratulate the author, if that is not an impertinence. I am reviewing from the old 1972 Penguin revised edition.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

We find out a lot about all the artists that were considered part of the Bloomsbury group, in England during the 1910s and 1920s.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it following Saturday Review feature when the book first came out. My intro to Strachey and Bloomsbury.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book, full of moving and insightful moments in the life of the guy who pretty much invented the idea of biography as art. Tons of names to keep track of, but it's a joyous burden.

[Ron Van Der Reeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is nothing new under the sun that has not occured before,it started my fascination with all things Victorian (Bloomsbury,the Pre-raphealites,Oscar Wilde,Thackeray,Dickens,William Morris,London)

[Julie James]

Ok, I only read around 350 pages (it's probably 600 pages) and then it was due at the library. I'll come back to it one of these days.

[Bsldavio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nonfiction