The Man who Slumped in a Chair
Many of the images of the Bloomsbury Group taken at Lady Ottoline Morrells's home at Garsington or in her house in Bedford Square there include the rather etiolated figure of Lytton Strackey. Bearded and bespectacled he is often depicted slumped in a chair or reading a book.
Lytton's own writings were to cause a sensation when, in May 1918 he published Eminent Victorians, a biography of Florence Nightingale, General Gordon, Cardinal Manning and headmaster Thomas Arnold.
His witty approach to his subjects blew away the reverence in which each had previously been held. Indeed it radically changed the tenor of subsequent biographies which had until then been studies in veneration.
Bertrand Russell read the book whilst in Brixton Prison. ‘I often laughed out loud in my cell while I was reading the book. The warder came to my cell to remind me that prison was a place of punishment.’
Lytton Strachey may well have slumped but he was no slouch. The success of Eminent Victorians was followed in 1921 by the publication of a biography of Queen Victoria for which he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.