Eminent Victorians
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Eminent Victorians marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of Cardinal Manning and the manipulative, neurotic Florence Nightingale; and in his essays on Dr Arnold and General Gordon his quarries are not only his subjects but also the public-school system and the whole structure of nineteenth-century liberal values.
About the Author
Giles Lytton Strachey, the son of General Sir Richard Strachey, F.R.S., was born in 1880. He showed a gift for writing from his earliest youth. After leaving Cambridge, where he was at Trinity College, in 1905, he became known in literary circles in London for his essays and book reviews; for two years he was a regular contributor to the Spectator. In 1912 he published his first book, Landmarks in French Literature. This caused no sensation, and gained very little recognition till after the publication of Eminent Victorians in 1918, which was an immediate and spectacular success, and of Queen Victoria in 1921. These two books on Victorian England made him famous, at once securing for him a positions as biographer and stylist which the ensuing years have served to consolidate.
In 1928 Elizabeth and Essex appeared, followed in 1931 by Portraits in Miniature. Lytton Strachey died in 1932. Much of his outstanding work as a literary critic was included in a collection of studied under the title Books and Characters in 1922 and in a posthumous volume, Characters and Commentaries.
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the preface of "Eminent Victorians" Lytton Stracheys affirms his contemporaries could not write the history of victorianism because they know it too much. And indeed Strachey appears to know "too much" about an era which is finished but still lingers on in Edwardian and Georgian squeamishness. Writing in 1921, Strachey is intent of getting rid of this cumbersome Victorian heritage, hence his fierce, ironical blows at a few select personalities. This methods enables him to throw light into hidden places, to expose the world of vice and corruption, the inner rotten core which is hidden by the high-flung discourses of High Victorianism. Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale and General Gordon are the four emblematic, nearly iconic characters of an ambiguous hypocritical society. Strachey portrays Cardinal Manning as a cunning self-seeking man, using the Churches - the Church of England and later the Catholic Church - as a ladder for his own career. The mythic Florence Nightingale appears in a crude light, as a psychotic authoritarian leader. Through Dr Arnold, the Master and reformer of Rugby, Strachey exposes all the violence and hidden cruelty of the public school system. "The last days of General Gordon" show the reverse side of the imperial myth - in its most appalling aspects. There's something terrifing in these insights into the secret lives of such celebrated personalities. "Eminent Victorians" is a challenging, compelling essay, all the more so as the life of each character is dealt with briefly, concision being for Strachey an essential quality for a biographer. This very conciseness, added to an inimitable style, witty and full of understatement, gives the essay even more satirical brilliancy - thus it is delightful food for thought.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A classic of its time. The witty Lytton Strachey unseats Victorian icons from their pedestals.
I most enjoyed the chapter on Cardinal Manning, which touches on the life and work of John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement as well as the English Catholic church at a turbulent time in its history. Over-reliant on secondary sources, I understand, but a real page-turner.
I most enjoyed the chapter on Cardinal Manning, which touches on the life and work of John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement as well as the English Catholic church at a turbulent time in its history. Over-reliant on secondary sources, I understand, but a real page-turner.
Format:Paperback
I have read "Eminent Victorians" several times now, each time with greater enjoyment. In it's time a bestseller, it is forgotten by all but literary types today. Reading it, even now, you can see why it was so popular. Four people, iconic in their time, pivotal in the thinking of the 19th century and key turning points in the development of the modern world, are laid bare.
Strachey was famous for his dry, incisive wit and here, in 1918, in a world disillusioned by war, he turns his jaundiced eye on four of the "boys own paper" heroes of Victorian public life. Cardinal Manning, the talented and ambitious cleric who made a new career for himself after converting to catholicism; Dr Arnold, the headmaster immortalised (in fictional form) in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' - the man who civilised the barbaric "Lord of the Flies" world of the late Georgian public school and intorduced the 'play up play up and play the game' philosphy which is still satirised today; General Gordon, the charismatic hero of Britain's wars in China and the sacrificial victim at Khartoum; and last but most well-known, Florence Nightingale, the reformer of nursing and heroine of the Crimean War.
All four were in their day idolised; all four share a self-consciousness of their destiny which, to a modern eye, looks arrogant and egocentric. Strachey, separated by a generation and illuminated by the early twentieth century's dawning understanding of psychology, invents in these monographs a new type of biography; one which unpicks the forces shaping a personality, examines their motives and looks coolly at the roots of their "greatness". In doing so, he punctured the over-blown balloon of hero-worship which had suurounded them, and amused a whole generation of younger readers brought up on the sort of nauseating moralist didacticism which we are mercifully spared today.
Modern scholarship has redressed the balance somewhat and we can say that Strachey was unfair. But his unfairness is so beautifully written, so compact and concise in its dissection, that we are seduced. To get the full flavour of his style, find and read an earlier, hagiographic biography of any of these figures for contrast.
If you enjoy "Eminent Victorians", try Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh (Penguin English Library) , a fictional biography which Strachey would certainly have known. Butler's hero struggles through the Victorian pomosity, cant and hypocrisy which Strachey is also attacking.
Strachey was famous for his dry, incisive wit and here, in 1918, in a world disillusioned by war, he turns his jaundiced eye on four of the "boys own paper" heroes of Victorian public life. Cardinal Manning, the talented and ambitious cleric who made a new career for himself after converting to catholicism; Dr Arnold, the headmaster immortalised (in fictional form) in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' - the man who civilised the barbaric "Lord of the Flies" world of the late Georgian public school and intorduced the 'play up play up and play the game' philosphy which is still satirised today; General Gordon, the charismatic hero of Britain's wars in China and the sacrificial victim at Khartoum; and last but most well-known, Florence Nightingale, the reformer of nursing and heroine of the Crimean War.
All four were in their day idolised; all four share a self-consciousness of their destiny which, to a modern eye, looks arrogant and egocentric. Strachey, separated by a generation and illuminated by the early twentieth century's dawning understanding of psychology, invents in these monographs a new type of biography; one which unpicks the forces shaping a personality, examines their motives and looks coolly at the roots of their "greatness". In doing so, he punctured the over-blown balloon of hero-worship which had suurounded them, and amused a whole generation of younger readers brought up on the sort of nauseating moralist didacticism which we are mercifully spared today.
Modern scholarship has redressed the balance somewhat and we can say that Strachey was unfair. But his unfairness is so beautifully written, so compact and concise in its dissection, that we are seduced. To get the full flavour of his style, find and read an earlier, hagiographic biography of any of these figures for contrast.
If you enjoy "Eminent Victorians", try Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh (Penguin English Library) , a fictional biography which Strachey would certainly have known. Butler's hero struggles through the Victorian pomosity, cant and hypocrisy which Strachey is also attacking.
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