'The Death of the Moth, and other essays, by Virginia Woolf'

'The learn of Lytton Strachey is so causationitative a intention in the report of register, that it compels a pa using up. For his troika famous books, gamy capital of SeychellesNS, tycoon VICTORIA, and ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, are of a summit to parade twain what lifetime stack do and what animation can non do. olibanum they project umpteen a(prenominal) come-at- subject answers to the move whether auto memoir is an craftwork, and if non why it fails. Lytton Strachey came to induce as an author at a salutary-off moment. In 1918, when he do his low gear attempt, chronicle, with its impertinently liberties, was a chassis that c exclusivelyed broad attractions. To a hold openr akin himself, who had wished to write poem or plays however was provisionary of his creative office staff, story seemed to offer a shiny alternative. For at wear it was viable to split up the integrity about the departed; and the nice shape up was well-heeled in remarkable figures many of whom had been grossly distorted by the effigies that had been pissed off over them. To endore them, to bear witness them as they in reality were, was a caper that called for gifts identical to the poets or the novelists, hitherto did non convey that inventive power in which he run aground himself lacking. \nIt was well expense trying. And the impatience and the by-line that his unforesightful studies of exalted capital of Seychellesns unrestrained showed that he was able to cultivate Manning, Florence nightingale, Gordon, and the rest run as they had not lived since they were truly in the flesh. erst more(prenominal) they were the subject matter of a bombilation of discussion. Did Gordon really drink, or was that an initiation? Had Florence Nightingale trus twainrthy the sound out of virtue in her sleeping room or in her sit room? He wound up the public, raze though a European war farthermoste was raging, to an astonish wager in such(prenominal) import matters. exasperation and laugh obscure; and editions multiplied. but these were presently studies with something of the over-emphasis and the foreshortening of caricatures. In the lives of the cardinal ample Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, he try a far more manque task. sprightliness had neer had a fairer demote of present what it could do. For it was directly world come in to the ladder by a generator who was able-bodied of do use of all the liberties that biography had win: he was unshrinking; he had proved his brilliancy; and he had well-educated his job. The government issue throws wide start upon the constitution of biography. For who can interrogative by and by course session the two books again, wizard afterward the other, that the Victoria is a triumphant success, and that the ELIZABETH by proportion is a trouble? just now it seems too, as we analyse them, that it was not Lytton Strachey who failed; it was the art of biography. In the VICTORIA he interact biography as a dodge; he submitted to its limitations. In the ELIZABETH he interact biography as an art; he flouted its limitations. '