Remaining papers of Lytton Strachey, comprising manuscripts and letters relating to Eminent Victorians, drafts of outgoing letters, incoming correspondence, childhood drawings, his passport, address books, appointment diaries and other personal effects, the archive including:

(i) Strachey's Eminent Victorians: Group of manuscripts and letters, including his autograph list in pencil of twelve names (Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, General Gordon, Professor Sidgwick, Watts, The Duke of Devonshire, Darwin, J. S. Mill, Jowett, Carlyle, Lord Dalhousie, and Thomas Arnold), these being the intended subjects his Victorian Silhouettes, the book that he began writing in 1912 which was to be abandoned in favour of Eminent Victorians, with its cast of four (Manning, Arnold, Nightingale and Gordon); his autograph draft of an address to the Cambridge ʻApostles' ("...The President has asked me to propose the toast of ʻEminent Victorians'. I shall be delighted to do so. But I feel one difficulty: I find it very hard to decide what an Eminent Victorian is... If a historian set out to write a history of the Victorian Age, he would probably be obliged to notice a curious sterility which seems to infect so many of its most eminent personages, Mr Carlyle, Mr Ruskin, Mr Watts, Cardinal Manning, General Gordon, and many more, were, in one sense or another, decidedly sterile. Dr Arnold was an exception; but then perhaps it would have been a good thing had Dr A. been less productive. The Age really, from some points of view, might almost be called the Age of Impotence..."), 5 pages; retained autograph draft of his letter to his publishers Chatto & Windus of 30 December 1917 ("...I am in receipt of your letter of the 28th proposing to undertake the publication of my book, ʻFour Eminent Victorians'. As to the terms, I should be glad to know if, on the proposed scale of royalties, you would be willing to allow me £50 advance royalties, payable on publication. I think the portraits would be an important feature of the book... I think there should be five portraits, and not four, as a portrait of Newman... seems to me indispensable. If a contract was prepared, would you have any objection to my submitting it to the Society of Authors, of which I am a member, for their advice?..."); retained autograph draft of a letter to Maurice Baring, justifying his portrayal of the "cautious, measured, unimpeachably correct" Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer in the chapter on General Gordon in Eminent Victorians; retained autograph draft of a letter to Annie Thackeray, Lady Ritchie, dated 5 December 1918, justifying his treatment of A.H. Clough, a close friend of her father Thackeray, in the chapter on Florence Nightingale in Eminent Victorians ("...I am proud to think (with reservations!) you like my book. As to the reservations – perhaps I am wrong about Clough – it is difficult to be certain, but I can only say that my remarks represent my genuine opinion. I did not of course attempt to tell the whole truth about him; he was an incidental figure, and it was impossible to do more than set down what appeared to me the salient features. You say that I ʻdwelt on puerilities'; it was precisely the puerilities about him that seemed to me so important and so remarkable. You say he was a ʻsincere man who all his life tried to do his duty'. Of course; no one would dream of denying it... But I cannot think he was a wise man or a man to be held up as an example to future generations. In fact, he seems to me to embody a whole set of weaknesses very characteristic of his age – weaknesses which have been hitherto either ignored or cited as virtues, and against which it was one of the main purposes of my book to make a protest..."); typed letter to Strachey by Geoffrey Whitworth of Chatto & Windus, dated 27 May 1918 ("...You will be glad to hear that ʻEminent Victorians' has been going so well that we are being forced to think about a reprint...")

(ii) Strachey and the Cambridge Apostles: Autograph draft of an address to the Cambridge Conversazione Society (Apostles) on the subject of a dream, delivered when presented with their 86th annual report (7 pages)

(iii) Strachey's Dedicatee and Supporter: Series of nearly forty autograph letters and cards to Lytton Strachey by the Cambridge mathematician Harry Norton, who supported Strachey during the writing of Eminent Victorians ("...I can let you have £100 in June, £100 more in the January after..."), and to whom the book is dedicated: the letters full of news of fellow Apostles and Bloomsbury friends, such as Bertram Russell, who many thought had met his intellectual match in Norton ("...Bertie Russell was here [in Rome] & I took him in a motor car last Sunday to Veii & Bracciano. He's an odd companion; at first, he was clever, then gave me some tiresome advice. But, what with one thing & another ... he became more human & as we were coming home, he made one quite sincere remark: I don't remember that I ever heard him make another. Perhaps it will amuse you to know that it was: 'Oh, Isn't it a bore that working is such a fag!'..."), Lady Ottoline Morrell ("... I spent a couple of days with Ottoline in Oxford; she's playing her part, too, with conviction; she'd been to London the day I came to buy a thirty shilling violin to give a strolling musician she made friends with in Lausanne..."), the mathematical protegy Srinivasa Ramanujan ("...The mathematicians are all talking of a Hindu Euler sent over by the Indian Government who's rediscovering the whole of modern analysis under the eyes of Hardy & Littlewood, & by the help, I'm quite convinced, of the University Library. The Philosophers were busy avoiding one another for the good of their health. The rest of the College seemed to be playing games or talking politics..."), the visiting André Gide ("...I don't at all see why he should not stop here till the end of September, when he goes to France with your Mg Mark Allegret who's called up. But the idea of suggesting it intimidates me. What with his frenchifiedness ..."), and Bloomsbury at large ("... went to the first night of the ballet on Thursday – Ottoline, of course, with Osbert Sitwell & Gertler, Hutchinson with Mrs Jowett etc etc all waiting about in the promenade for the comic turns to be done with, & Lady Cunard jaunting to & fro from her own box to the Royal one in what seemed to be a night-gown & gold stockings. The performance was a great success; Ottoline personally congratulated the performers, afterwards, behind the curtain – to their great pleasure, I was told she said... ...Since Duncan & Nessa came to town, Gordon Square has been alive with comings & goings, we've been roused as from our grave, the house is being repainted, there was a party, new young men about the house, Clive has a new love, talk, jokes even..."); the series also shot through with self-doubt and anxiety, revealing Norton's increasingly fragile spirits ("...I'm disheartened & miserable about my mathematics. Now I can look back on my three years work, it seems clear to me that I'm running my head against a solid wall of incapacity. Fact is, I can't do mathematics. I'm not sure of that, but I almost am. If I were to give them up, what's left?..."), not least during the years of the Great War ("...I find this war horrible, horrible in fact horrible in imagination, in retrospect & in expectation, past present & future hateful hateful..."), over 50 pages, some dust-staining, etc., 8vo, Trinity College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, 1911-1924

(iv) Strachey's Last Essay and Last Lover: Autograph working draft of his last and unfinished essay, "Othello" (written when both his health and his relationship with Roger Senhouse were failing), the fragment published by James Strachey in the posthumous Characters and Commentaries, 9 pages, 8vo

(v) Strachey's Failed Academic and Professional Career: Retained autograph draft of Strachey's letter to the Rev William Cunningham, who had failed his dissertation and prevented him winning a fellowship at Trinity ("...the whole spirit of the report indicates a conception of historical criticism so widely different from my own that it would be useless for me to hope to reap any real advantage from it..."); testimonial letters written for Strachey on his application for a post in the Education Office from his cousin Professor Walter Raleigh ("...He has a mind of rare power & distinction, a character of great decision and a temper so reasonable & gentle that it is a delight to work with him..."), Stanley Leathes ("...He is a man of unusually wide culture, of considerable originality, and unusual literary gifts..."), Dr Cunningham, and Strachey's tutor, J. D. Duff; together with a letter by Duff to Lady Strachey about Lytton

(vi) Strachey in High Society: Letter to Strachey from the Duchess of Marlborough enclosing an "old photo I took when you were here"; with the photograph showing him in distinguished company (Blenheim Palace, 2 November 1929)

(vii) Strachey's Childhood Drawings: Pencil and watercolour drawings by the Strachey children; together with a manuscript catalogue "Allenwood Society of Painters / Exhibition / 2nd Year / Catalogue/ September 11th 1887" that lists forty-six items of which six are pencil drawings by Lytton of his dining room, a castle, two boys playing Battledore & Shuttlecocke, all signed "G.L.S."

(viii) Strachey's Appointment Diaries: His appointment diaries for 1909, 1910, 1912, 1930

(ix) Strachey's Address Books: Two address books, the earlier containing addresses of, inter alia, T.S. Eliot (his name corrected from Eliott, his addresses migrating through Crawford Mansions, West Street, Marlow, to Clarence Gate Gardens), E.M. Forster (originally billeted at Weybridge then relocating to Abinger of harvest fame), André Gide, E. McKnight Kauffer, Ezra Pound, at 5 Holland Place Chambers (where he lived during the Great War); Ethel Smyth; Roger Senhouse; A.N. Whitehead; at the end of this volume he has written "Ridentem, dicere verum quid vetat?" (Horace's ʻWhat prevents me from speaking the truth with a smile?'); the second, later, address book (often contenting himself with Christian names only) including (surname B) "Vanessa", "Clive", "Max B", (surname F) "Morgan", (surname G) "Duncan", "Bryan & Diana", (surname K) "Maynard", (surname L) "Topsy", (surname M) "Raymond", "Ottoline", (surname P) "Ralph", (surname S) "Pippa", "James", "Oliver" and (surname W), "Virginia", both red morocco

(x) Strachey's Reading Notebook: Listing Books Read in 1918, the year Eminent Victorians came out, opening in January 1918: "Queen Victoria's Letters. Vols. 1 & 2/ Lord Morley – Recollections/ Tolstoy – Diary (1846-53)/ Grapigny – Vie Privée de Voltaire..."

(xi) Strachey's Passport: Lytton Strachey's passport issued on 26 May 1926, his profession given as "Author", with visa stamps for trips to France, Germany, Italy between 1926 and 1931 (this passport was originally marked for expiration on 26 May 1931 but then renewed until 26 May 1936 and so has not been cancelled)

(xii) Strachey's Father: Printed order of service for the funeral of Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Strachey, RE, GCSI, FRS, LLD, 1908

(xiii) Strachey's Birth Certificate: Birth certificates of Lytton Strachey and his siblings, namely Richard John (born 1861), Oliver (1874), Giles Lytton (1880), Marjorie Colville (1882), plus sundry medical certificates

(xiv) Strachey's Will: Typed copy of Lytton Strachey's will, dated 13 June 1929, leaving £10,000 and all his pictures and drawings to Dora de Houghton Partridge [Carrington], £1000 to Reginald Sherring [Ralph] Partridge, all his books published prior to 1841 to Roger Senhouse