Editing Lytton Strachey (section)

=== Beginnings ===
[[File:CarringtonTidmarsh.png|thumb|A painting by [[Dora Carrington]] of the "Mill House", [[Tidmarsh]], [[Pangbourne]], on the upper [[Thames]], where much of ''Queen Victoria'' was written]]
After Strachey left Cambridge in 1905, his mother assigned him a [[bedsit|bed-sitting]] room at 69 Lancaster Gate. After the family moved to 67 Belsize Gardens in [[Hampstead]], and later to another house in the same street, he was assigned other bed-sitters.<ref name="sanders"/> But, as he was about to turn 30, family life started irritating him, and he took to travelling into the country more often, supporting himself by writing reviews and critical articles for ''[[The Spectator]]'' and other periodicals. In 1909 he spent some weeks at a health spa in [[Saltsjöbaden]], near [[Stockholm]] in Sweden. In this period he also lived for a while in a cottage on [[Dartmoor]] and about 1911–12 spent a whole winter at [[East Ilsley]] on the [[Berkshire Downs]]. During this time he decided to grow a beard, which became his most characteristic feature.<ref name="sanders"/> On 9 May 1911 he wrote to his mother:{{blockquote|The chief news is that I have grown a beard! Its colour is very much admired, and it is generally considered extremely effective, though some ill-bred persons have been observed to laugh. It is a red-brown of the most approved tint and makes me look like a French decadent poet—or something equally distinguished.<ref>''The Letters of Lytton Strachey'', ed. Paul Levy, 2005 ({{ISBN|0-670-89112-6}})</ref>}}

[[File:Lytton Strachey, 1911-12.jpg|thumb|upright|Strachey photographed by [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]] in 1911 or 1912]]

In 1911 [[H. A. L. Fisher]], a former President of the [[British Academy]] and the Board of Education, was in search of someone to write a short one-volume survey of French literature. Fisher had read one of Strachey's reviews ("Two Frenchmen," ''Independent Review'' (1903)) and asked him to write an outline in 50,000 words, giving him [[John William Mackail|J. W. Mackail]]'s ''Latin Literature'' (1909) as a model.<ref name="sanders"/> ''Landmarks in French Literature'', dedicated to <nowiki>"J[ane] M[aria] S[trachey],"</nowiki> his mother, was published on 12 January 1912. Despite almost a full column of praise in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' of 1 February and sales that by April 1914 had reached nearly 12,000 copies in the [[British Empire]] and America, the book brought Strachey neither the fame he craved nor the money he badly needed.<ref name="sanders"/>