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Eminent Victorians

Part of Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin

Author Lytton Strachey
Introduction by Michael Holroyd
Paperback
$17.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics
5.1"W x 7.8"H x 0.66"D  
On sale Jul 19, 1990 | 288 Pages | 9780140183504
Grades AP/IB
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A genre-changing work of biography

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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Lytton Strachey, whose iconoclastic reexaminations of historical figures forever changed the course of modern biographical writing, was born in London on March 1, 1880. He was educated in a series of private schools and attended University College, Liverpool, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1899. In London he found work as an essayist for various journals and became the drama critic for The Spectator. The favorable reception of his first book, Landmarks in French Literature (1912), bolstered his commitment to writing. Virginia Woolf said: "The figure of Lytton Strachey is so important a figure in the history of biography that it compels a pause. For his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, are of a stature to show both what biography can do and what biography cannot do. . . . The anger and the interest that his short studies of Eminent Victorians aroused showed that he was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and the rest live as they had not lived since they were actually in the flesh. . . . In the lives of the two great Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, he attempted a far more ambitious task. Biography had never had a fairer chance of showing what it could do. For it was now being put to the test by a writer who was capable of making use of all the liberties that biography had won." View titles by Lytton Strachey
Eminent VictoriansIntroduction
Preface

Cardinal Manning
Florence Nightingale
Dr Arnold
The End of General Gordon

About

A genre-changing work of biography

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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author

Lytton Strachey, whose iconoclastic reexaminations of historical figures forever changed the course of modern biographical writing, was born in London on March 1, 1880. He was educated in a series of private schools and attended University College, Liverpool, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1899. In London he found work as an essayist for various journals and became the drama critic for The Spectator. The favorable reception of his first book, Landmarks in French Literature (1912), bolstered his commitment to writing. Virginia Woolf said: "The figure of Lytton Strachey is so important a figure in the history of biography that it compels a pause. For his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, are of a stature to show both what biography can do and what biography cannot do. . . . The anger and the interest that his short studies of Eminent Victorians aroused showed that he was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and the rest live as they had not lived since they were actually in the flesh. . . . In the lives of the two great Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, he attempted a far more ambitious task. Biography had never had a fairer chance of showing what it could do. For it was now being put to the test by a writer who was capable of making use of all the liberties that biography had won." View titles by Lytton Strachey

Table of Contents

Eminent VictoriansIntroduction
Preface

Cardinal Manning
Florence Nightingale
Dr Arnold
The End of General Gordon

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