Ray Strachey

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Standard Name: Strachey, Ray
Birth Name: Rachel Pearsall Conn Costelloe
Nickname: Ray
Married Name: Rachel Mary Strachey
Though RS published three novels between 1907 and 1927 (and a volume of history in collaboration with her husband ), most of her writing is non-fictional and reflects her deep commitment to women's suffrage, women's employment, and other political issues. Her nonfiction includes biographies of suffrage leaders, countless essays and broadcasts, and The Cause, an excellent history of the women's movement, for which she is best remembered.
Chapman, Wayne K., and Janet M. Manson, editors. Women in the Milieu of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: Peace, Politics, and Education. Pace University Press, 1998.
257-8
Halpern, Barbara Strachey. “Ray Strachey--A Memoir”. Women in the Milieu of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: Peace, Politics, and Education, edited by Wayne K. Chapman and Janet M. Manson, Pace University Press, 1998, pp. 77-86.
86n4
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Ray Strachey wearing a dark jacket over a white dress shirt with bow tie and two vertical rows of dark buttons. Her dark hair is piled behind her head.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Eleanor Rathbone
ER contributed an essay on Changes in Public Life to Our Freedom and Its Results, a feminist anthology edited by Ray Strachey and published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf .
Alberti, Johanna. Eleanor Rathbone. Sage Press, 1996.
179
Pedersen, Susan. Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience. Yale University Press, 2004.
380
Cultural formation Mary Stott
Mary's mother took her to Liberal meetings while she was still a girl. From her early twenties, when she read Ray Strachey 's The Cause, she developed her own feminist agenda.
Stott, Mary. Forgetting’s No Excuse. Faber and Faber, 1973.
131
death Millicent Garrett Fawcett
She commissioned Ray Strachey , her life-long friend, to be her official biographer; but a feminist of a later generation, Ann Oakley , has speculated that she probably required from Strachey discretion and even self-censorship...
Education Augusta Webster
Suffragist historian Ray Strachey relates that AW jeopardized the prospects of women students at the South Kensington Art School when she was expelled for whistling.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. Virago, 1978.
96
Webster, Augusta. “Introduction”. Portraits and Other Poems, edited by Christine Sutphin, Broadview, 2000, pp. 9-37.
10
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Bussy
DB 's youngest sister, Marjorie Colville (Gumbo) Strachey (1882-1964), was a teacher, suffragist, writer, and member of the group Woolf called the Neo-Pagans group (which included Rupert Brooke , Gwen Raverat , Ka Cox ...
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Bussy
Oliver Strachey , like a number of Strachey men, worked with the East India Company . His second wife was Rachel (Ray) Costelloe , Newnham College graduate, women's rights activist, and author, best known for...
Family and Intimate relationships Amabel Williams-Ellis
Amabel Strachey had a long roster of talented, accomplished relations by birth and marriage. Within her own generation her cousins or cousins by marriage included the writers Lytton Strachey , Ray Strachey , and Dorothy Bussy
Friends, Associates Julia Strachey
JS took a room at the home of her father and stepmother, Oliver and Ray Strachey , who lived at 42 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown, 1983.
104
Friends, Associates Julia Strachey
JS was at Brackenhurst in 1911 when her father, Oliver , married his second wife, feminist author and activist Ray Costelloe Strachey .
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A to Z. Facts on File, 1995.
278
Julia admired her new stepmother but was not close to the couple.
Strachey, Julia, and Frances Partridge. Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey. Little, Brown, 1983.
45, 51
Friends, Associates Julia Strachey
Shortly after the wedding, Julia became the charge of Alys Russell , a suffrage and temperance activist who was also the aunt of Ray (Costelloe) Strachey , sister of writer Logan Pearsall Smith and Mary Berenson
Friends, Associates Mary Agnes Hamilton
MAH 's memoirs give detailed and affectionate pen-portraits of innumerable friends, made both at home and in many of the other countries she travelled or worked in. Many of her English friends are known names...
Literary responses Lydia Becker
Ray Strachey , in her history of the feminist movement, summarizes LB 's enormous impact: She combined political sagacity with undeviating enthusiasm, and she was therefore widely trusted and respected, in spite of a certain...
Literary responses Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Ray Strachey praises MGF 's biography of Molesworth as one of the most interesting of her books.
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray, 1931.
187
Strachey explains that Molesworth had championed the cause of co-operation with the British colonies in their efforts...
Literary responses Florence Nightingale
John Stuart Mill , who called Cassandra a cri du coeur,
Kahane, Claire. “The Aesthetic Politics of Rage”. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Vol.
3
, No. 1, pp. 19-31.
28
uses its feminist theories in The Subjection of Women. Virginia Woolf quotes from it in A Room of One's Own.
Webb, Val. Florence Nightingale: The Making of a Radical Theologian. Chalice, 2002.
102
Literary responses Florence Nightingale
Ray Strachey called this book very long, and further claimed that its arrangement is very confused . . . it is a highly wearisome book to read. It is full of repetitions, and of...

Timeline

15 April 1909
The Common Cause, the official organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , began weekly publication in Manchester.
26 July 1913
The National Union of Women's Suffrage SocietiesWomen's Pilgrimage culminated in London with a meeting in Hyde Park.
April 1935-June 1936
Stephen King-Hall published a children'sjournal called Mine, A Magazine for All who are Young.

Texts

Strachey, Ray. A Quaker Grandmother, Hannah Whitall Smith. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1914.
Strachey, Ray. Careers and Openings for Women. Faber and Faber, 1935.
Strachey, Ray. Frances Willard: Her Life and Work. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
Strachey, Ray. Marching On. Jonathan Cape, 1923.
Strachey, Ray. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. J. Murray, 1931.
Strachey, Ray, editor. Our Freedom and Its Results. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1936.
Strachey, Ray, editor. Religious Fanaticism. Faber and Gwyer, 1928.
Strachey, Ray. Shaken by the Wind: A Story of Fanaticism. Faber and Gwyer, 1927.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. G. Bell and Sons, 1928.
Strachey, Ray. The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain. Virago, 1978.
Strachey, Ray. The World at Eighteen. T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.
Strachey, Ray. Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Service. London and National Society for Women’s Service, 1927.