 She attended Bedales School, the Slade School of Fine Art, and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read modern languages.In 1915 she moved in with her brother in his flat in Bloomsbury and became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, where she met James Strachey, the assistant editor of "The Spectator".They moved in together in 1919 and married the following year on 4 June 1920 at St Pancras.