Published by Penguin Books, 1971, softcover, illustrated, index, 398 pages, condition: new.
When Michael Holroyd's life of Strachey appeared in 1967, it changed the course of modern biography, setting a new standard for the recounting of literary lives and launching the enduring Bloomsbury revival. In the 1960s, however, many of Strachey's friends and lovers were still alive; much could not be said, and access to letters and resources was restricted. Since then, almost all his circle has died, and homosexuality in England has been decriminalized. In telling Strachey's life anew, Holroyd has drawn on a wealth of previously unavailable material, bring fresh candor and accuracy to his account of Strachey's friendships with E. M. Forster, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, Ralph and Frances Patridge, and his companion Dora Carrington, among others. In many of Bloomsbury's three-cornered relationships, Holroyd could lay claim to only two sides of the triangle. Now he has all three with which to recount the story of this extraordinary man and his complex world. At the center of the drama is the long-lasting relationship between Strachey and Carrington and their "Triangular Trinity of Happiness" with Ralph Partridge. In equally elegant and humorous prose, Holroyd shows the parts that many men and women played in this comedy of manners as it developed into a tragedy.
One of the greatest biographies ever written.
And one which only gets better and richer upon rereading.
Strachey should be more of an icon than he is. He was one of the greatest prose stylists who ever lived...and more importantly for the world at large, a proud gay man and conscientious objector when the former was a crime and the latter might as well have been.
The quality that Holroyd brings out most in this book is one which I find all too rarely in biographies...a need for friendship. He documents the shifting nature of Strachey's lifelong friendships, most notably his bond with his onetime fiancee Virginia Woolf, the establishment of new ones, the breaking of old ones, and most of all, his efforts as ceaseless as his writing to keep a stable network of people he truly cared for around him.
It was the antidote in some ways to his string of unhappy love affairs, but moreover, it spoke to a need for something human he could count on while surrounded by the uncertainties of the world. As a picture of a man dealing with insecurities in a realistic way, it may never be equalled.
Holroyd's research is impeccable, his own writing flawless and perfectly constructed, his use of quotation judicious, and his tone veering from witty to heartbreaking at all the right moments.
