Customer Reviews:
Back to the future?.......2003-08-14
11 years after the publication of "Painted Ladies," Elizabeth Pomada returned to San Francisco to gaze anew upon its Victorians, and found a new concern for authenticity, subtlety, and sophistication in what she now calls the "Colorist Movement." The examples she shows here, while still splendidly detailed and richly pigmented, are for the most part less gaudy than those in the first book, reflecting the emergence of yuppies onto the preservationist stage earlier occupied by hippies and radicals. Almost the best part of the book, however, is the many interiors she has included, often by houseowners with a keen interest in authentic restoration. Architecture and interior-decorating buffs alike will want to own this volume.
Inspiring! Beautiful! A "must have" for renovators!.......1999-05-24
If ever you want to be inspired, transformed, bowled over or "wowwed" by the possibilities of an old house... Read the Pomada/Larsen series. The pictures are breathtakenly beautiful and the text is quite informative. Lots of 'pearls of wisdom' there. Before you buy that victorian, read this book for some informative information. After you buy--keep reading (like a litany) to keep the vision alive amidst the rubble and asbestos. You won't be sorry ---you will be renewed. These books were like falling in love, or the collector's itch---The fever is maddening but the end result is Oh so sweet. Get them all!! (5 titles still available)
Book Description
San Francisco is famous for its distinctive and well-preserved Victorian architecture. Victorian architectural historian and longtime SF resident Randolph Delehanty and photographer Richard Sexton provide a pictorial and historical overview of this timeless look. In the Victorian Style traces the development of Victorian architecture—influenced by both aesthetic trends and new advances in building technology—as well as the history of the city's street plan development, building trends, and parks. The book also offers a rare tour of the traditional Victorian interior, room by room, including not only grand halls, parlours, and dining rooms, but also rarely seen details such as kitchens, pantries, and bathrooms. With over 150 color photographs, this informative historical guide is a must for tourists and Victorian lovers, as well as architects, designers, and decorators.
Book Description
“San Francisco in 1900 was a Gold Rush boomtown settling into a gaudy middle age. . . . It had a pompous new skyline with skyscrapers nearly twenty stories tall, grand hotels, and Victorian mansions on Nob Hill. . . . The wharf bristled with masts and smokestacks from as many as a thousand sailing ships and steamers arriving each year. . . . But the harbor would not be safe for long. Across the Pacific came an unexpected import, bubonic plague. Sailing from China and Hawaii into the unbridged arms of the Golden Gate, it arrived aboard vessels bearing rich cargoes, hopeful immigrants, and infected vermin. The rats slipped out of their shadowy holds, scuttled down the rigging, and alighted on the wharf. Uphill they scurried, insinuating themselves into the heart of the city.”
The plague first sailed into San Francisco on the steamer Australia, on the day after New Year’s in 1900. Though the ship passed inspection, some of her stowaways—infected rats—escaped detection and made their way into the city’s sewer system. Two months later, the first human case of bubonic plague surfaced in Chinatown.
Initially in charge of the government’s response was Quarantine Officer Dr. Joseph Kinyoun. An intellectually astute but autocratic scientist, Kinyoun lacked the diplomatic skill to manage the public health crisis successfully. He correctly diagnosed the plague, but because of his quarantine efforts, he was branded an alarmist and a racist, and was forced from his post. When a second epidemic erupted five years later, the more self-possessed and charming Dr. Rupert Blue was placed in command. He won the trust of San Franciscans by shifting the government’s attack on the plague from the cool remove of the laboratory onto the streets, among the people it affected. Blue preached sanitation to contain the disease, but it was only when he focused his attack on the newly discovered source of the plague, infected rats and their fleas, that he finally eradicated it—truly one of the great, if little known, triumphs in American public health history.
With stunning narrative immediacy fortified by rich research, Marilyn Chase transports us to the city during the late Victorian age—a roiling melting pot of races and cultures that, nearly destroyed by an earthquake, was reborn, thanks in no small part to Rupert Blue and his motley band of pied pipers.
Customer Reviews:
A pleasant surprise.......2006-02-09
Based on the title I would not have picked this book, but it was chosen by my book club. What a pleasure to read. Well written and one of the best overviews of what San Francisco was like at the turn of the century including during the 1906 earthquake. All of the members of the book club enjoyed this book and many have recommended it to friends.
Fascinating, fun, and a quick read despite flowery language.......2003-12-24
If I thought too much about the language, I tended to think "who was this person's editor, and what were they drinking?" But despite the intermittent distraction, I found it fascinating. The author tells a real non-fiction story - and it measures up to a good fiction read. I'm from San Francisco, so I had an added interest in the location if not the topic, but, come on, who isn't fascinated by The Plague? The author jumped around in time in a way that had no rhyme or reason for me, but again, I wasn't more than temporarily distracted by this. Worth the time.
Gripping and Timely.......2003-11-11
Ms. Chase has mixed a veritable cauldron of explosive subjects about which to write something fresh: politics and race in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, the just emerging discoveries about plague vectors, topped off with brand new research into the characters who stood at the center of an outbreak of plague in San Francisco's Chinatown. She recounts how the early cases were misdiagnosed or dismissed in order to prevent damage to the city's reputation, and while the descriptions of individual cases is by its nature repetitive, the story is made all the more powerful as the epidemic's toll mounts and, finally, subsides. Ms. Chase describes the anti-rat campaign and its role in beating the plague, and pinpoints the seemingly minor difference in flea types that saved us from a much worse outbreak. Ms. Chase scrupulously avoided the easy paths to sensationalism and chose to stick to the facts. For instance, she makes the point that it was evident that the number of plague victims was being undercounted due to sufferers (or bodies) being removed from the city, possibly in collusion with authorities, but steadfastly sticks only to the proven cases in proving the existence of an "epidemic". The epidemic may have been far worse than recorded. And coming just as we were avoiding travel to certain destinations because of SARS, her book is an outstanding reminder of the responsibility of public health authorities to place the public good above all else in matters of infectious disease. If you are interested in the early days of public health in the United States, or wish to draw lessons for the present, this book is a must read!
The Black Death in Early San Francisco.......2003-08-12
This book is not only a fascinating look into the origins of the bubonic plauge in early San Francisco, tracing the disease's trek from China through Hong Kong to Chinatown in Honolulu and spreading itself in the western frontier of California; it is a view of how racism and politics affected interfered with solution. When plague first appeared in San Francisco, it struck the Chinatown area the hardest, inflaming tensions between the whites and the immigrants. When Dr. Joseph Kinyoun threatened quaratine of the entire area, the businessmen and politicians rose against him, putting the city' s profitability before the public's health. His replacement, Rupert Blue, managed the plague clean-up campaign with much diplomacy and brought about sweeping changes that not only curbed the rise of the plague, but also enhanced the city's image.
This book has it all -- poitical intrigue, racism, a disease out of control, heroes and villains. Sometimes non-fiction can be better than most novels, and in this case, it makes for a great book well worth reading.
Sherlock Holmes in San Francisco.......2003-07-06
A medical history that rivals whodunnits as a page-turner. For all its scrupulous research and shocking parallels to our own day, it generates an excitement that many novelists would envy. The colorful characters - greedy businessmen, dishonest politicians, a timid medical establishment, an heroic doctor - live with growing danger from disease, earthquake, fire and even from city officials intent on a coverup. As a bonus, one reads a fascinating history of San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century.
Average customer rating:
|
Music in Other Words: Victorian Conversations (California Studies in 19th-Century Music, 12)
Ruth A. Solie
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Classical
| Musical Genres
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
History & Criticism
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
Theory
| Theory, Composition & Performance
| Music
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Entertainment
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0520238451 |
Book Description
Just as the preoccupations of any given cultural moment make their way into the language of music, the experience of music makes its way into other arenas of life. To unearth these overlapping meanings and vocabularies from the Victorian era, Ruth A. Solie examines sources as disparate as journalism, novels, etiquette manuals, religious tracts, and teenagers' diaries for the muffled, even subterranean, conversations that reveal so much about what music meant to the Victorians. Her essays, giving voice to "what goes without saying" on the subject--that cultural information so present and pervasive as to go unsaid--fill in some of the most intriguing blanks in our understanding of music's history.
This much-anticipated collection, bringing together new and hard-to-find pieces by an acclaimed musicologist, mines the abundant casual texts of the period to show how Victorian-era people--English and others--experienced music and what they understood to be its power and its purposes. Solie's essays start from topics as varied as Beethoven criticism, Macmillan's Magazine, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, opera tropes in literature, and the Victorian myth of the girl at the piano. They evoke common themes--including the moral force that was attached to music in the public mind and the strongly gendered nature of musical practice and sensibility--and in turn suggest the complex links between the history of music and the history of ideas.
Average customer rating:
|
A Gift to the Street
Olwell & Waldhorn
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
Residential
| Building Types & Styles
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0312327137 |
Customer Reviews:
better with color.......1998-02-14
This book would make a spectacular production if it were to eventually be printed in color. Is there a possibly of this? The black and white photographs do not do justice to the fabulous homes from the Victorian era, with all their ornamentaion and multiple colors. Waldhorn has done a remarkable job capturing the timelessness of these structures, and locating the most spectacular models in California. Unlike most books on the Victorians, this one is divided by features-"homes with towers", "gates", "homes with gables", etc. just to name a few. This book is nearly perfect; all it needs is to be published in color.
Average customer rating:
|
A Victorian Traveler in the Middle East: The Photography and Travel Writing of Annie Lady Brassey
Nancy Micklewright
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Schools, Periods & Styles
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
| Abstract Expressionism
| Ancient & Classical
| Art Deco
| Art Nouveau
| Baroque
| Byzantine
| Constructivism
| Contemporary Art
| Cubism
| Dadaism
| Expressionism
| Fauvism
| Folk Art
| Futurism
| German Expressionism
| Gothic
| Impressionism
| Mannerism
| Medieval
| Modern
| Neoclassical
| Pop
| Post-Impressionism
| Pre-Raphaelite
| Prehistoric & Primitive
| Realism
| Renaissance
| Rococo
| Romanesque
| Romantic
| Surrealism
Middle Eastern
| Regional
| History & Criticism
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
History
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Photographers, A-Z
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
| Adams, Ansel
| Avedon, Richard
| Bourke-White, Margaret
| Brady, Mathew
| Bubley, Esther
| Callahan, Harry
| Capa, Robert
| Caro, Anthony
| Carroll, Lewis
| Cartier-Bresson, Henri
| Clark, Larry
| Cunningham, Imogen
| Doisneau, Robert
| Eisenstaedt, Alfred
| Evans, Walker
| Feininger, Andreas
| Gatewood, Charles
| Geddes, Anne
| General
| Goldin, Nan
| Goldsworthy, Andy
| Hamilton, David
| Haskins, Sam
| Hine, Lewis Wickes
| Hurrell, Geoerge
| Jackson, William Henry
| Kenna, Michael
| Kern, Richard
| Kinsey, Darius
| Lange, Dorothea
| Leibovitz, Annie
| Leonard, Herman
| Mann, Sally
| Mapplethorpe, Robert
| Mark, Mary Ellen
| Miller, Lee
| Modotti, Tina
| Muybridge, Eadweard
| Newton, Helmut
| Orkin, Ruth
| Ray, Man
| Ritts, Herb
| Seymour, David
| Sherman, Cindy
| Steichen, Edward
| Stieglitz, Alfred
| Sturges, Jock
| Uelsmann, Jerry
| Wegman, William
| Weston, Edward
| Wiggins, Myra Albert
Photo Essays
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Middle East
| Travel
| Photography
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
San Marino
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
California
| State & Local
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Travel
| Writing
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Essays & Travelogues
| Reference & Tips
| Travel
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0754632024 |
Book Description
For more than a century the refined but playful elegance of Victorian houses has helped define the style and identity of the city by the bay. San Francisco Victorians showcases the variety and charm of the city's signature houses. This generous but portable survey features the most picturesque of the Victorians and exquisite Queen Annes, including classically restored marvels and the more fancifully decorated "painted ladies." Focusing on breathtaking exteriors and finely turned details from homes in all of the city's neighborhoods, and with a fun, informative text by noted Victorian architecture authority Randolph Delehanty, San Francisco Victorians is an enchanting and colorful look at these enduring beauties.
Customer Reviews:
A Long Stroll in the City.......2000-10-10
San Francisco Victorians is a wonderful little book, especially for the homesick like me. The book is full of great pictures reflecting the cultural heritage of Frisco, with a historian's essay telling the history along the way. Excellent companion for a long stroll in the city; for delightful discoveries.
WOW - great photos of my favorite houses.......2000-06-13
I've seen this photographers' work before and he's done another impeccable job documenting some of the most originally restored homes I've seen in twenty years.
Beautiful San Fransisco Buildings.......2000-06-12
I love this book. The pictures are beautiful and the text is very informative. If you love artful buildings and wonderful pictures of them, you will be very glad to have this book.
Amazon.com
The four biographical essays that make up Eminent Victorians created something of a stir when they were first published in the spring of 1918, bringing their author instant fame. In his flamboyant collection, Lytton Strachey chose to stray far from the traditional mode of biography: "Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate the dead--who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design?" Instead he provided impressionistic but acute (and, some said, skewed) portraits. Rarely does Strachey explore the details of a subject's daily or family life unless they point directly to an issue of character. In short, he pioneered a deeply sardonic and often scathingly funny biographical style.
None of Strachey's Victorians emerge unscathed. In his hands, Florence Nightingale is not a gentle archangel descended from heaven to minister sweetly to wounded soldiers, but rather an exacting, dictatorial, and judgmental crusader. Her "pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush ... to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of a self-sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames were terrible. She respected no one." Dr. Thomas Arnold, the man appointed to revamp the very private British public school system, fares little better: in Strachey's acid ink, he became "the founder of the worship of athletics and the worship of good form." In this same vain, military hero General Gordon is portrayed as a temperamental, irascible hermit, occasionally drunk and often found in the company of young boys--a man who tended to forget and forgo the tenets found in the Bible he kept with him always. And the powerful and popular Cardinal Manning, who came within a hair's breadth of succeeding Pope Pius IX, belonged, Strachey writes, "to that class of eminent ecclesiastics ... who have been distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability."
As he offered up indelible sketches of his less-than-fab four, Strachey was intent on critiquing established mores. This effortlessly superior wit knew full well that deep convictions and good deeds often go hand in hand with hypocrisy, arrogance, and egomania. His task was to pique those who pretended they did not. --Jordana Moskowitz
Book Description
Vivid, ironic and sometimes seathing studies of four legendary figures: Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightengale, Cardinal Manning and General Gordon. Six 90-minute cassettes and one 60.
Download Description
When it was published in 1918, EMINENT VICTORIANS became one of the first books to take apart the heroes of an earlier era. Its irreverent essays on Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold and General Gordon found an eager audience in the post-WW I generation.
Customer Reviews:
Literary Milestone - Not Entirely Impartial But Absolutely Fascinating Biography.......2007-03-26
It is difficult to imagine anyone actually reading nineteenth century biographies. If encountered today, say in dusty archives, these works commemorating the dead - typically two thick volumes of "ill-digested masses of material" - are notable for their tediousness, seeming lack of design, and "lamentable lack of selection".
With this book, Eminent Victorians (1918), Lytton Strachey deliberately set out to revitalize biography. His subjects - Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, and General Gordon - were all legends in their time, archetypical Victorians. His incisive style, sense of drama, and subtle irreverence made Eminent Victorians an immediate success, and one that remains fascinating today. Florence Nightingale and perhaps General Gordon have retained some eminence, but Dr. Arnold and Cardinal Manning have faded into the background, at least from the perspective of American readers.
In his introduction Strachey wrote: "That is what I have aimed at in this book - to lay bare the facts of some cases as I understand them, dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior intentions." Be that as it may, readers will undoubtedly discern some passion, some partiality, and some unstated objectives. Regardless, Eminent Victorians is an enjoyable, entertaining, intellectual adventure that brings life to Victorian biography.
Henry Edward Manning at age thirty-eight was a rising man in the Church of England. He had many powerful connections: he was the brother-in-law of Samuel Wilberforce, who had lately been made a bishop; he was close friend to Mr. Gladstone, who was a cabinet minister; and he was becoming well known in influential circles in London. Within two years Manning - later to become Cardinal Manning - resigned his position and was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
The real Florence Nightingale, not the saintly, self-sacrificing, delicate maiden lady of popular legend, was, according to Strachey, more interesting, but also less agreeable too.
Dr. Thomas Arnold acquired the position of headmastership of Rugby School in August, 1828, and subsequently changed the face of Public School life.
General Gordon is remembered for his death at Khartoum. Strachey's controversial account is great biography. (In the 1966 movie Khartoum, Charlton Heston played the role of General 'Chinese' Gordon.)
Not as snide as you might think.......2006-11-08
I just don't see that Strachey made Florence Nightingale and General Gordon look as foolish as he made Cardinal Manning and Thomas Arnold appear in "Eminent Victorians". I suppose that impression comes from having been brought up reading 20th century 'warts-and-all' biographies rather than the 'if-you-can't-say-something-nice-don't-say-it-at-all' biographies of the 19th century. Although Strachey made Manning and especially Arnold seem pretty icky, Nightingale and Gordon come through as pretty admirable human beings -- not perfect (i.e. human) but on the whole admirable.
The importance of not being earnest.......2005-09-23
Some of Lytton Strachey's choices of subject for the four scathing biographical essays contained in _Eminent Victorians_ may seem rather strange. Florence Nightingale was an obvious choice for any biographer, but who cared about Matthew Arnold in the post-war era when Strachey was writing these essays? Who gave a thought to Cardinal Manning or Chinese Gordon? And why combine their biographies into one book?
The answer may be that all four shared one unusual character trait, one so reminiscent of the Victorian age that even the thought of it brings the scent of lavender to mind: extreme earnestness. Each figure cared very, very deeply about something, but for each that earnestness also masked a corresponding personal craving. Like many young Britons in the post-WWI era, Strachey was deeply distrustful of earnestness, often seeing it as an excuse for personal gain or fulfillment. This was especially true when one man's deeply held beliefs sent others to their deaths, as it often had during WWI. He had no time for official incompetence, ignorance, or inaction, but often found the opposite just as dangerous.
The first essay in _Eminent Victorians_ is that of Cardinal Manning. Manning was a priest in the Church of England who became involved in the Oxford Movement, a group of churchmen who disliked the increasing secularization of the C of E and who wished to bring it back to its Catholic roots. Most of those involved remained in the Anglican communion, forming the nucleus of the "High Church" movement of the late 19th century. Manning found that he could not stop at that, though; unable to reconcile his belief in a Church Universal with his membership in a church that existed basically because Henry VIII was a serial adulterer, and unable to 'take back' the text of a tract he had written that was deeply critical of the Anglican church and which eliminated any chances of his gaining higher office, Manning found himself eventually in the arms of Rome. Strachey paints Manning as a weak, vacillating, impulsive man of great ambition whose conversion to Roman Catholicism was as much a political and career move as one of the heart and soul. Had Manning remained in the Church of England, Strachey implies, he would have been an archdeacon until death; only conversion to Roman Catholicism allowed him to fulfil his ambitions towards higher office. It's a masterful biography, one that explores not just its purported subject but also the birth of Anglo-Catholicism.
The third essay, of Rugby school headmaster Matthew Arnold, reveals Strachey's hatred of the English public school system (or what we in North America would call the private school system). He skewers Arnold for failing to make the educational reforms he was hired to make and for delegating the discipline of younger students to the senior class, thereby condoning and even encouraging the type of severe bullying that caused many young men to consider suicide. Arnold, whose earnestness in creating 'Christian gentlemen' did not go so far as to allow him to teach them himself, refused to update the school curriculum ostensibly because gentlemen didn't need science, maths, or English literature, but really (as Strachey contends) because Arnold had studied Latin and Greek himself and didn't want to feel his own learning was unnecessary. Strachey points out that Arnold did little at Rugby except pronounce the Sunday sermon, intimidate students, and foster a personality cult that eventually made him the father of modern education in many Britons' eyes - even though he made no changes to the educational system itself. His reforms in discipline and in religion (and his lack of reforms in curriculum) were copied by most public schools, to the great detriment of the British people.
In Strachey's essay on General Gordon, Strachey shows how a brave man with a strong belief in the rightness of his cause and an overwhelming desire for adventure may have been used to precipitate a war and to advance the cause of imperialism. Gordon, a war veteran and former colonial administrator (and a rather unstable fellow), was sent to the Sudan during a revolt to report on conditions there and to evacuate civilians who were loyal to Egypt, which was then controlled by the British. Gordon did none of the above; he instead tried to wipe out the insurrection, and for his troubles was killed and his staff and allies massacred. His death was used by the imperialist factions in the ruling party as a call to arms. Strachey wonders: was this deliberate? Was Gordon given alternate instructions by the imperialists? Did they intend for him to die, so that his death could be used as a rallying point for further imperialism? He argues his point well, and the essay is definitely worth reading.
Strachey's portrait of Florence Nightingale is not quite as successful as the rest. Nightingale was born into a wealthy family, and like all young women of her class and time was expected to marry young, have children, and generally be nothing more than a society lady. Florence wanted more: she wanted to work, to make a difference, to change the world, and she wanted everybody around her to work as hard as she did. After many years of waiting, she finally had her chance; her efforts to reform British military hospitals and eventually the practice of medicine in the Empire did in fact change the world. Strachey seems to have thought that she pushed her colleagues too hard, that her own drive was so abnormal that her friends and family could not keep up. Granted, she did push some of her colleagues very hard, and one may have even died from overwork, but they chose to work with her because they believed in her, and given what she was able to do I think they were right to believe in her. It also appears that Strachey may not have been comfortable with a woman refusing to hide her intelligence or personal strength when dealing with men. I had the distinct impression while reading this essay that Strachey was sneering at those men who took orders from Nightingale or who assisted her in her work. Another reviewer mentioned that Nightingale is portrayed here as a 'pushy woman' - and she certainly is; however, most of Strachey's implied criticism seems to be directed towards the men who treated her as the intelligent, hard-working, valuable human being she was. Strachey also seems to have viewed her invalid status as something of a neurotic problem, which in the light of recent research (showing that she likely had undulant fever) may not be accurate.
Four lives well told.......2004-09-04
Lytton Strachey gives us a revealing look at four prominent Victorian personalities: Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Thomas Arnold, and General Charles George Gordon. Personally, I most enjoyed learning more about Florence Nightingale and General "Chinese" Gordon. Manning and Arnold are simply more steeped in their own times and have, perhaps, less to offer to modern readers.
The section on Gordon is the best. It covers the end of his life at Khartoum in a much more interesting fashion than that portrayed by Charlton Heston in the movie. The modern problems in Darfur show that in many ways little has changed there in the last 120 years.
Strachey's style is to get behind the events of his subjects' lives to delve into their psychological motivations, and he is often less than kind to them. He frequently punctures their balloons and exposes their foibles in a very entertaining way.
Eminently wicked biographies........2004-08-01
(Giles) Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) introduced psychological depth to biographical writing, thereby forever changing the biography. Strachey "revolutionized the art of biography," E. M. Forster observed, by doing what no biographer had ever done before. He managed to get inside his subject's head. Strachey was a Victorian eccentric, educated at Trinity College, where he became a member of the secret society of "the Apostles," an elite group of passionate intellectuals who rejected Victorian mores, which later evolved into the Bloomsbury group (E.M Forester, Leonard and Virginia Woolf). Specifically written as an attack on Victorianism, EMINENT VICTORIANS caused a stir when it was first published in 1918. Strachey's radical goal in EMINENT VICTORIANS was to question the moral arrogance, hypocrisy, and ego of the Victorians. With his wicked pen, he targeted religion, education, imperialism, liberalism, and humanitarianism in such a flamboyant way that Strachey's book caused Bertrand Russell to laugh out loud while he was incarcerated for his antiwar activities.
EMINENT VICTORIANS is a splendid collection of four portraits of an ecclesiastic (Cardinal Manning), a woman of action (Florence Nightingale), an educator (Thomas Arnold), and a man of adventure (General Charles "Chinese" Gordon). Rather than approaching his subjects from a safe literary distance, Strachey understood that they were multifaceted and at times inexplicable, ambiguous, and self-contradicting human beings, and by no means flawless Victorian heroes.
G. Merritt
Book Description
Few cities can claim the instantaneous association with Victorian style that is enjoyed by San Francisco. Beyond the polychrome Victorian houses, there is a cumulative visual impact of all types of architecture, both exterior and interior. This beautiful book contains 260 color photos and includes sections devoted to Victorian House planning, the Edwardian Era, before and after transformations and Victorian Revival Interiors.
Customer Reviews:
If only I had the money . . ........2003-10-10
I attended college in the Bay Area in the early `60s and have been nostalgically in love with San Francisco and Marin ever since. I spent many, many hours hiking around the city with a couple of friends, climbing the hills, exploring narrow passages between buildings, and generally gawking at the 19th century architecture. I also knew a girl whose grandmother (or aunt, or something) lived in one of the "Painted Ladies" on Alamo Square, the strip now known as "Postcard Row," so I actually got to see the inside of one of the gorgeous homes detailed and depicted in this book. If you're not from there, you likely lump together all of San Francisco's historic domestic architecture as "Victorian" -- but you would be wrong. There's Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Stick Style, Shingle Style, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival, plus various hybrids among and later additions to all of those. Duchscherer is a longtime resident of the city and a highly regarded architectural historian and he leads the reader through the art and business behind these homes, while Keister's lush photography of busy (and occasionally overdone) Victorian interiors will have you drooling on the page. One of my personal favorites is the Westerfeld House in the Western Addition, built in 1889, which includes a fifth floor (!) tower room with an amazing view. Another is Falkirk (originally the Robert Dollar Mansion), built in San Rafael in 1888, a much more rambling Tudor extravaganza filled with a king's ransom in paneling and wainscotting; it was saved from demolition and entirely renovated (thank God) after I left the area, and I shall have to go and visit it the next time I get out there. What a book!
From architectural roots to hybrid styles.......2001-12-14
This survey of Victorian beauties of California's San Francisco Bay Area provides a blend of regional history and architectural insights, surveying the changing Victorian house styles of the region and featuring a wealth of fine color examples. From architectural roots to hybrid styles, Book Of The Courtesans is packed with detail.
Books:
- Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar
- Places Rated Almanac (Special Millennium Edition)
- Plantation Homes of Louisiana and the Natchez Area
- Professional Practice for Interior Designers, 3rd Edition
- Programming WCF Services (Programming)
- Provencal Interiors: French Country Style in America
- Pure California: 35 Inspiring Houses in the New California Tradition
- Santa Barbara Style
- Saturnalia: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel (Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries)
- Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Entrepreneur's Notebook: Practical Advice for Starting a New Business Venture
- The Harriet Lane Handbook: A Manual for Pediatric House Officers, 17th Edition
- Music:An Appreciation, 4th Brief Edition with v4.5 Multimedia Companion CD-ROM
- J.K. Lasser's Consumer Guide to Protecting and Preserving Everything You Own
- Principles of Financial Engineering
- The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages
- The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History
- Foxcor Manufacturing Company Practice Set
- Liberal Economics and Democracy: Keynes, Galbraith, Thurow, and Reich
- Cold Is the Grave: A Novel of Suspense
Daughters of Painted Ladies: America's Resplendent Victorians
Painted Ladies: San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians
America's Painted Ladies: The Ultimate Celebration of Our Victorians
San Francisco Victorians
Victorian Style: Classic Homes of North America
