➢ GILES LYTTON STRACHEY AS A BIOGRAPHER
➢ LYTTON STRACH’S ART OF BIOGRAPHY
By Kamran Aslam Lecturer
BIOGRAPHY:
“An account of the series of events making up a person’s life. “
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than
just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's
experience of these life events.
Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a
person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in
diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.
HISTORY OF BIOGRAPHY:
At first, biographical writings were regarded merely as a subsection of history with a
focus on a particular individual of historical importance. The independent genre of biography
as distinct from general history writing, began to emerge in the 18th century and reached its
contemporary form at the turn of the 20th century.
MODERN BIOGRAPHY:
The first modern biography, and a work which exerted considerable influence on the
evolution of the genre, was James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, a biography of
lexicographer and man-of-letters Samuel Johnson published in 1791. The sciences
of psychology and sociologywere ascendant at the turn of the 20th century and would
heavily influence the new century’s biographies.
STRACHEY AS A BIOGRAPHER:
British critic Lytton Strachey revolutionized the art of biographical writing with his 1918
work Eminent Victorians, consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian
era: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General
Gordon.[9]Strachey set out to breathe life into the Victorian era for future generations to
read. Up until this point, as Strachey remarked in the preface, Victorian biographies had
been "as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker",
NEW ERA OF BIOGRAPHY:
The biographer Lytton Strachey belonged to the Bloomsbury Group. He inaugurated the
new era of biographical writing at the close of World War I. In his preface, Strachey
enunciated the two fold principle of selection and scrutiny which was to mark all his
work.
BRIEFNESS:
Strachey proposed a briefness which excludes everything that is superfluous and nothing
that is significant. The completion of this mission made Strachey the greatest of modern
biographers.
REAL PORTRAIT:
Strachey has certainly revolutionized the art of writing a biography. Before him,
the biographer used to neglect like a hagiographer the darker side of their heroes
because they generally used to idealize their heroes by representing them as angels of
virtue. Strachey was the first to realize that in order to give a complete and human
portrait.
“A biography that idealizes or ilodizes the person(especially a person
who is a saint)”
BIOGRAPHY OF REAL HUMANS:
Strachey did not hesitate to include in his biographies the failings, jokes and
whims of his heroes. He believed that a biographer must have a psychological insight
into his character.
A biographer must neither suppress vital facts nor obscure those aspects of his
character which help us visualize his true picture as he lived. Instead of giving
abstractness, Strachey indeed gave a creature of flesh and blood.
Strachey has brought us face to face with men and women, who are nonetheless
fallible human beings and not infallible saints or gods. We watch them live, think, and
quarrel like us. Sometimes they behave meanly and foolishly and sometimes nobly and
wisely.
BIOGRAPHY AS A LITERARY GENRE:
Strachey has suggested that the biographies must be primarily a form of literary
art capable of giving the pleasure. In biography, it is not so much the subject as the
treatment of the subject that really matters. Strachey has made biography a literary
medium. His biographical style has the appeal of a fine work of art.
TIME FOR BIOGRAPHY:
Strachey suggested that the biographies of eminent men should not be immediately
written after their death because their relatives and friends are naturally reluctant to
disclose the relevant confidential details. Thus he was of the opinion that:
“First class biographies can only be written long after the hero’s death.”
Strachey had a gift of irony which has hardly been equaled in literature by anyone since
the eighteenth century masters.
OBJECTIVE OF BIOGRAPHY:
Strachey’s objectives were to make biography an unmistakable channel for the truthful
transmission of personality; to write it as the most authentic footnote to history; to
make it a vivid and complete story; to make it a source of inner satisfaction to the
reader. In most of his experiments in biography Strachey certainly succeeded in
attaining them. Strachey’s achievement in biography was indeed a challenge to dullness
and incompetence.
Charles Richard Sander says:
“Throughout his career Strachey protested against the lengthy, formless, badly
written biographies produced by the Victorians. He insisted that the spirit of
the biographer should be free and that he should write from a definite point of
view, should select and include only the essential materials of a subject, should
give to a work good structure and excellence of style.”
His intensely personal sketches shocked many critics but delighted many readers. M.
Forster says:
“Strachey helped sweep away the ponderous Victorian approach to the writing
to biography, replacing it with a witty and with impressionistic style that was
widely imitated and studied at the University of Cambridge.”
CONCLUSION:
Instead of using the conventional method of detailed chronological narration, Lytton
Strachey carefully selected his tact to present “Eminent Victorians”.
These deliberations suffice to signify that Strachey is the greatest biographer of the
Victorian age.
