Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)

British biographer and essayist, who was part of the leftist arts and literature Bloomsbury Group, which gained notoriety for Bohemian lifestyles. He was born on March 1, 1880 in Clapham Common South Side, London, England. He was the son of Sir Richard Strachey, an Indian civil engineer and soldier. His mother was the essayist Lady Jane Strachey. He was named after his godfather, Robert Bulwer-Lytton, the First Earl of Lytton, and Viceroy of India. In 1899 he started at Trinity College where he became a member of the Apostles, making friends with G. E. Moore, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Leonard Woolf, and Clive Bell, which all became members of the Bloomsbury Group. It was also during this time he began a close relationship with Keynes. Around 1915, he met Dora Carrington, a British artist, who would become extremely close to him. Eventually, the couple pledged their lives to each other to the point that in November of 1917, they began to cohabitate together. In 1921 after Carrington married Ralph Partridge, he and the couple would live together in a ménage à trois. He traveled with the newlyweds to Italy for a honeymoon. Outside of this arrangement were other published known relationships. Their nontraditional life style continued until she divorced Partridge, sometime after 1926. His posthumous letters and essays document their relationships. During his career, he wrote "Ely: An Ode," "Eminent Victorians," and "Queen Victoria" among others. He died on January 21, 1932 of stomach cancer. Although he left Carrington a monetary sum of his estate, his long-time companion, Carrington committed suicide two months later.