"Strachey's portraits ... revolutionized English biography. Until Strachey, biographers had kept an awestruck distance from their subjects; anything short of adulation was regarded as disrespect. Strachey, however, announced that he would write lives with 'a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant,' whether flattering to the subject or not. His intensely personal sketches scandalized stuffier readers but delighted many literati."—Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature