Lytton Strachey

Born in London on 1 March 1880, Lytton Strachey became one of the most distinctive English writers of the early twentieth century. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later became a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, the circle of writers and thinkers associated with Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes.

Strachey is remembered above all for changing the art of biography. Instead of producing huge, respectful Victorian life stories, he wrote with compression, irony, and a keen eye for character. Eminent Victorians (1918) made his reputation, and Queen Victoria (1921) confirmed his gift for turning historical figures into vivid, human subjects.

His work still stands out for its style: clever, skeptical, and surprisingly modern. Strachey died on 21 January 1932, but his influence on literary biography has lasted far beyond his own era.