Strachey, (Giles) Lytton (1880–1932)

Lytton Strachey was an important twentieth-century biographer and literary critic, best known for his role as a founding member of the highly influential Bloomsbury Group. The group comprised key intellectual and creative figures whose controversial, avant-garde work contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century artistic doctrines. His best-known work, Eminent Victorians, published in 1918, helped reinvent life writing as a high literary art. His satirical representations of celebrated Victorians helped to destabilize nineteenth-century values and exposed the hypocrisy of Victorian morality. He identified as a homosexual, openly discussing his beliefs and values with his close circle of friends. This information was not made public until after his death, caused by undiagnosed stomach cancer, at the age of 51. Although overshadowed by his Bloomsbury contemporaries such as Virginia Woolf, he remains a popular and important figure.