Editing Lytton Strachey (section)

==Career==
=== Beginnings ===
[[File:CarringtonTidmarsh.png|thumb|A painting by [[Dora Carrington]] of the "Mill House", [[Tidmarsh]], [[Pangbourne]], on the upper [[Thames]], where much of ''Queen Victoria'' was written]]
After Strachey left Cambridge in 1905, his mother assigned him a [[bedsit|bed-sitting]] room at 69 Lancaster Gate. After the family moved to 67 Belsize Gardens in [[Hampstead]], and later to another house in the same street, he was assigned other bed-sitters.<ref name="sanders"/> But, as he was about to turn 30, family life started irritating him, and he took to travelling into the country more often, supporting himself by writing reviews and critical articles for ''[[The Spectator]]'' and other periodicals. In 1909 he spent some weeks at a health spa in [[Saltsjöbaden]], near [[Stockholm]] in Sweden. In this period he also lived for a while in a cottage on [[Dartmoor]] and about 1911–12 spent a whole winter at [[East Ilsley]] on the [[Berkshire Downs]]. During this time he decided to grow a beard, which became his most characteristic feature.<ref name="sanders"/> On 9 May 1911 he wrote to his mother:{{blockquote|The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its colour is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely effective, though some ill-bred persons have been observed to laugh. It is a red-brown of the most approved tint and makes me look like a French decadent poet—or something equally distinguished.<ref>''The Letters of Lytton Strachey'', ed. Paul Levy, 2005 ({{ISBN|0-670-89112-6}})</ref>}}

[[File:Lytton Strachey, 1911-12.jpg|thumb|upright|Strachey photographed by [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]] in 1911 or 1912]]

In 1911 [[H. A. L. Fisher]], a former President of the [[British Academy]] and the Board of Education, was in search of someone to write a short one-volume survey of French literature. Fisher had read one of Strachey's reviews ("Two Frenchmen," ''Independent Review'' (1903)) and asked him to write an outline in 50,000 words, giving him [[John William Mackail|J. W. Mackail]]'s ''Latin Literature'' (1909) as a model.<ref name="sanders"/> ''Landmarks in French Literature'', dedicated to <nowiki>"J[ane] M[aria] S[trachey],"</nowiki> his mother, was published on 12 January 1912. Despite almost a full column of praise in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' of 1 February and sales that by April 1914 had reached nearly 12,000 copies in the [[British Empire]] and America, the book brought Strachey neither the fame he craved nor the money he badly needed.<ref name="sanders"/>

===''Eminent Victorians'' and later career===
Soon after the publication of ''Landmarks'', Strachey's mother and his friend Harry Norton<ref>Henry Tertius James Norton, the "H.T.J.N.", to whom ''Eminent Victorians'' is dedicated,</ref> supported him financially. Each provided him with £100, which, together with his earnings from the ''[[Edinburgh Review]]'' and other periodicals, made it possible for him to rent a small thatched cottage, The Lacket, outside the village of [[Lockeridge]], near [[Marlborough, Wiltshire]]. He lived there until 1916 and it was there that he wrote the first three parts of ''[[Eminent Victorians]]''.<ref name="sanders" />

Strachey's theory of biography was now fully developed and mature. He was greatly influenced by [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky|Dostoyevsky]], whose novels he had been reading and reviewing as they appeared in [[Constance Garnett]]'s translations. The influence of [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] was important in Strachey's later works, most notably on ''Elizabeth and Essex'', but not at this earlier stage.<ref name="sanders" />

In 1916 Lytton Strachey was back in London, living with his mother at 6 [[Belsize Park Gardens]], [[Hampstead]], where she had now moved. In the late autumn of 1917, however, his brother Oliver and his friends Harry Norton, John Maynard Keynes, and Saxon Sydney-Turner agreed to pay the rent on the Mill House at [[Tidmarsh]], near [[Pangbourne]], Berkshire.

From 1904 to 1914 Strachey contributed book and theatre reviews to ''[[The Spectator]]''. Under the pseudonym "Ignotus", he also published several drama reviews.

During the First World War, Strachey applied for recognition as a [[conscientious objector]], but in the event, he was granted exemption from military service on health grounds. He spent much of the war with like-minded people such as [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]] and the [[Bloomsbury Group|Bloomsburys]].

[[File:Dora Carrington; Ralph Partridge; Lytton Strachey; Oliver Strachey; Frances Catherine Partridge (née Marshall), 1923.jpg|thumb|upright|Dora Carrington, Ralph Partridge, Lytton and Oliver Strachey, and Frances Partridge; snapshot by Ottoline Morrell, 1923]]

His first great success, and his most famous achievement, was ''[[Eminent Victorians]]'' (1918), a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. Unlike any biography of its time, ''Eminent Victorians'' examines the career and psychology of historical figures by using literary devices such as paradox, antithesis, hyperbole, and irony. This work was followed by another in the same style, ''Queen Victoria'' (1921).<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lytton-Strachey|title=Lytton Strachey {{!}} British biographer|work=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=2018-01-15|archive-date=27 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230227155202/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lytton-Strachey|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Dora Carrington; Stephen Tomlin; Walter John Herbert ('Sebastian') Sprott; Lytton Strachey, June 1926.jpg|thumb|Dora Carrington; Stephen Tomlin; Walter John Herbert ('Sebastian') Sprott; Lytton Strachey, June 1926]]

From then on, Strachey needed no further financial aid. He continued to live at Tidmarsh until 1924 when he moved to [[Ham, Wiltshire|Ham Spray House]] near [[Marlborough, Wiltshire]]. This was his home for the rest of his life.<ref name="sanders"/>