STRACHEY, Lytton. Three autograph letters signed (“Lytton”) or initialled (“G.L.S.”) to Clive Bell, Cambridge, 1909; Garsington Manor, 1915; Salisbury, n.d. Together 8 pages, 8°. “Imagine me coiled on a sofa in the well-known drawing-room, surrounded by .. seventeen incredibly hideous undergraduates (they always are incredibly hideous at the Union – Christ alone knows why)”. Happy recollections of Gordon Square contrasted with the prospect of renewing work on French Literature. Then “Oh! I find I was mistaken. One of the seventeen undergraduates is very far from being incredibly hideous. Shall I go and talk to him? Would that be quite fatal? I think I must!”. The second letter expresses keen admiration for Bell’s pamphlet, describes the young people romping at Garsington, records the discovery of a new novel by Conrad – “He’s a slightly more competent writer than D.H. Lawrence”. The last is chiefly devoted to the beauties of Salisbury: “The cathedral was bright green when I arrived, and the eighteenth century houses grouped round it an exquisite pink – as also were the boys”. Bound together with a black-and-white photograph of Strachey in profile, in three-quarter black morocco. From David Garnett’s library (Michael Hosking, 1983). Item 3097.