Lytton Strachey: The Really Interesting Question and Other Papers

by Lytton Strachey

A new collection of Strachey's shorter works, pieces which he dared not publish during his lifetime. Known to the public as a biographer, Lytton Strachey here writes as an avowed homosexual, a defender of the rights of women, and an advocate of peace during World War I. As a leading member of the legendary Bloomsbury Group, Lytton Strachey included among his friends such luminaries as Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes. This new collection of Strachey's works reveals much of the frank interplay of ideas and attitudes which characterized that distinguished group. All but one of these unusual pieces are published here for the first time. Many could not be published before because Strachey's surprisingly modern views might have offended the sensibilities of some of his contemporaries. Modern readers will perhaps be most intrigued to discover in these essays, stories, poems, and plays how openly Strachey wrote of the way he felt about homosexuality. He was also remarkably advanced in his views on women and their role in society. And his discussion in letters exchanged with his brother James, on resistance to conscription will sound equally modern to American ears. Readers of Strachey's famous biographies Elizabeth and Essex, Queen Victoria, and Eminent Victorians, interested in gaining a more rounded picture of their author and his times, will find this a most rewarding book.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.