Name: Books and Characters: French and English
Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
ISBN: 9781426460753

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Books and Characters: French and English

Lytton Strachey

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There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, I could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the matter.

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

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About the author

Lytton Strachey

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Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

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5 stars

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

changeableLandscape

2,185 reviews34 followers

April 5, 2023

I am not sure if this really deserves four stars, because I'm not certain why I enjoyed these essays so much. Some of it is certainly they were mostly on authors I'm interested in but don't know very much about (Racine, Voltaire, Rousseau), and some of it is that Strachey's voice mixed humour and sincerity in a way that really worked for me. But really, it is a mystery; it was just the right book at the right time, very soothing to read at night before sleep.

Oh, I also wanted to mention -- there is a lot of untranslated French in this book, but between my high school French classes and the Kindle app's built-in translator I had no problem with it. I think if I'd read this book pre-Kindle (or on paper) it would've been very frustrating!

essays

Paul Taylor

1,155 reviews8 followers

July 12, 2022

Strachey's scholastic credentials are evident however in this book there are but rare glimses of his concision and wit. Far too many of the accounts are laboured, prolix and frankly, dull.