page_title: Frances Partridge
section_title: Bloomsbury
hierarchical_section_title: Frances Partridge / Bloomsbury
caption_attribution_description: English: Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), vintage snapshot print/NPG Ax141540. Dora Carrington; Ralph Partridge; Lytton Strachey; Oliver Strachey; Frances Catherine Partridge (née Marshall), 1923
context_page_description: Frances Catherine Partridge CBE was an English writer. Closely connected to the Bloomsbury Group, she is probably best known for the publication of her diaries. She married Ralph Partridge in 1933. The couple had one son, Burgo Partridge.
context_section_description: While working at a London bookshop owned by David Garnett and Francis Birrell, Frances Partridge got to know Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, and Ralph Partridge. In 1921, Ralph Partridge had married Dora Carrington, who was in love with Lytton Strachey, a homosexual who was himself more interested in Partridge. An added complication was Dora Carrington's intermittent affair with one of Partridge's best friends, Gerald Brenan.  Carrington, Partridge, and Strachey shared a Wiltshire farm-house, Ham Spray, in a complex triangular relationship (later recorded in the 1995 film Carrington, with Alex Kingston playing Frances).
  Ralph Partridge now fell in love with Frances. They lived in London during the week and repaired to Ham Spray at weekends. After Dora Carrington committed suicide out of grief in 1932, shortly after Lytton Strachey's death, Ralph and Frances married on 2 March 1933.  They lived happily at Ham Spray until Ralph's death in 1960.
  They had one son, (Lytton) Burgo Partridge, who was born in 1935 and named after Strachey.  In 1962, Burgo married Henrietta Garnett, daughter of Angelica Garnett and David Garnett, with Henrietta already pregnant with their daughter.  He died suddenly of heart failure on 7 September 1963, only three weeks after the birth of their baby, Sophie Vanessa.  He had already been noticed for his writing ability, and had published one well-received book, A History of Orgies (1958).
  Frances sold Ham Spray and moved to London. Her writings, her membership of the Bloomsbury circle, her great personal charm and the energy that she retained into extreme old age together ensured for her a degree of celebrity towards the end of her life.
  She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Millennium New Year Honours.
caption: Dora Carrington, Ralph Partridge, Lytton and
  Oliver Strachey, and Frances Partridge, 1923
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