Eminent Victorians (Oxford World's Classics)

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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

Cardinal Manning * Florence Nightingale * Thomas Arnold * General Gordon Lytton Strachey's biographical essays on four 'eminent Victorians' dropped a depth-charge on Victorian England when the book was published in 1918. It ushered in the modern biography and raised the genre to the level of high literary art. Lytton Strachey approached his subjects with scepticism rather than reverence, and his iconoclastic wit and engaging narratives thrilled as well as shocked his contemporaries. Debunking Church, Public School and Empire, his portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Arnold of Rugby, and General Gordon of Khartoum changed perceptions of the Victorians for a generation. This edition is unique in being fully annotated and in drawing on the full range of Strachey's manuscript materials and literary remains.

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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

Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory

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Story of Men who Considered War the Greatest "Game"
A little gem of biography
Be Careful!
A Bully of a Book !
The Victorian Empire Builders

Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory
Byron Farwell
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393305333

Customer Reviews:

Story of Men who Considered War the Greatest "Game".......2007-04-05

Farwell has chosen eight men who became national heroes in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (he has a subsequent book called "Queen Victoria's Little Wars). The first two men in whose stories are presented (Gough and Napier) made most of their early imprints during the Napoleonic Wars and later starred in India. Farwell's stories about them are straight forward chronologies of their careers.

The third man to be bio-ed is Charles "Chinese" Gordon who made a name for himself during the Opium Wars in China, but later lost his life in the Sudan at Khartoum. He is the first of the group to be seen with a more critical eye; including the one that intimates that his death was partially self-inflicted by his arrogance.

Roberts is one of those men who always seemed to be at the right place at the right time and knew not only what was due from him, but a smart and creative way of accomplishing it. He was a 'soldiers soldier' and was one of the most respected men of his time for his courage, coolness under fire and concern for the men (including those in the ranks) who served with and under him. He was also a devoted family man.

Garnet Wolseley (much like Kitchener) was famous for his "Ring" of officers who followed him around the English Empire. Unless you were one of his, your chance of finding help or work was minimal. This attitude is what set him against his contemporaries Roberts and Wood.

Woods could be described as a plugger, and the longer he hung around the better he seemed to be. He doesn't really have much of a claim to fame but did a lot of the 'scut' work that was necessary in building the "Empire" in India and Africa. His career was unusual in that he originally was in the Navy and through some strange happenstance ended up as an Army Field Marshall

Macdonald was a man who was driven in so many ways by his personal demons. He was one of the few men of his day to rise through the ranks from private to general. This may have led him to always feel that he was under a microscope and had to do better than everyone else. Those he had a reasonable early and middle career, he was destroyed by ascersions of homosexuality and pedophilia, that drove him to eventual suicide.

The last to be bio-ed was Lord Kitchener who was an irrascible and taciturn man who also had his little coterie of officers whom he refered to as his "boys". There were only some hints at strangeness in him, he usually kept a young officer as his aide-de-camp but no improprieties were ever leveled at him. His greatest claim to fame was the conquest of the Sudan and the rebuilding of Khartoum. During WWI he served as Secretary of War and helped raise a Volunteer Army for the early fight in France. He was successful by raising a "Pals" Army that promised to keep groups of men together if they joined at the same time. The problem with this idea was that, men were place in the trenches with their friends and in many cases, the entire young male population of an area or town were wiped out in a single battle. Kitchener died while on a military visit to Russia.

All in all these are interesting stories for what they tell us about politics in the Victorian era (or error) and much about how things were run during the "Scramble for Africa" and the "Great Game" in Asia.

A little gem of biography.......2005-10-10

The stories are interesting, the writing is engaging, but the genius of this book is to compress a set of biographies into a single book rather than the current trend of writing definitive 1000 page biographies of even minor figures. In bite sized chunks you can survey the human condition, learn something about the history of a time, and get a great set of stories in a fraction of the time.

I wish there were more books like this. I'd like to write a book like this. The subject matter itself is an acquired taste...but read the book anyway.

Be Careful!.......2005-08-03

If you read anything by Farwell make sure that you reference other sources as he tends to rewrite history to his own liking. This is especially obvious in his biography of Stonewall Jackson. Time after time, he chooses to portray Jackson in a bad light; giving deference to accounts by people with an "axe to grind" while dismissing favorable accounts by those closest to Jackson.

A Bully of a Book !.......2005-01-15

I have found this book to become a permanent part of my humble library. If one was to have only one book about the British Empire, one could do a whole lot worse than this little tome.
It is not for the faint hearted PC historian but a real nuts ands bolts book about the Men who went out with amazingly small but highly effective Armies and made a huge chunk of the map pink. (For those not in the Know, the Old Empire was always coloured Pink on the maps) I can only hope that our Army would do so well in Iraq. I can recommended it most highly as it is with Mr. Farwell's other books

The Victorian Empire Builders.......2002-06-23

This compendium biography presents a fine sketch of the eight prominent Victorian generals who commanded during the Little Wars of Queen Victoria. The often respressed and somewhat bizarre characteristics of these men seems typical of the Victorian mind-set. While they were certainly eccentric, these men personified the times they lived in and in their actions pursued the notion of the White Man's burden to civilize the dark regions of the world.

In the politcially correct times that we live in today perhaps some of these notions will appear offensive, but in order to appreciate these man we must understand the times they lived in and try not to impose our own values upon them. Indeed, many Victorians would find our social values today strange to comprehend as well. Byron Farwell specializes in the Victorian military experience and his writtings on this topic are always witty and informative.

The reader may find it surprising that homosexuality was present in several of these gentlemen, namely Charles Gordon and Hector Macdonald. Again, we can attribute this to the oddities of the age which repressed such feelings on the surface, thereby encouraging their lurkings behind the scenes. It is doubtful that any of them would have preferred to advertise their inclinations as seems to be the norm today. Homosexuality was more discreet then, and perhaps that was a good thing in a way.
The military life that these men pursued perhaps inclined them toward a different lifestyle as the compnay of women was often infrequent in far outposts.

Customer Reviews:

Worth the money!.......2000-03-19

A well-presented book; and most interesting details of the artist's life an times. Slight disappointment in the plates - not all in colour and not full-page size. It is however, an extensive look at the artist and his work, I believe worth owning if you are interested in the genre. Not so interested myself in the sculpture side of his work and the small black and white photos of same do not show from all angles, but in general a good purchase.

Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity: The Last Eminent Victorian (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies) (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

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fun read !
Wow! A great read!

Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity: The Last Eminent Victorian (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies) (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)
George H. Snyder , and Benjamin Wolf
Manufacturer: Harrington Park Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

fun read !.......2003-08-05

This book pulls you in from the beginning. It's not a dry history but a witty and sharp look at the Bloomsbury Group and issues about sex and gender in England. She can be critical of Strachey's misogyny and class elitism while at the same time she makes her readers feel strongly about the plight of the gay man during a repressive era. The book is loaded with fascinating stories about his relationships with Virginia Woolf, Dora Carrington, and John Maynard Keynes. Sodomy, war, complicated love affairs--what more could a reader ask for?!

Wow! A great read!.......2002-11-21

I had never really known much about Lytton Strachey before reading Taddeo's book. I ordered this on a whim and loved it---I've just ordered Strachey's Eminent Victorians after reading this.

Taddeo writes really well---the book moves quickly and I was fascinated by Taddeo's analysis and discussion of Strachey's sexuality. What I liked most about this book (and I can't say this enough!) was its readability. This is a book for scholars and non-specialists.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Collection.......2004-08-03

This is a fabulous collection of short stories by Victorian women, most of whom are long out of print. The mores and manners of their time are apparent in all of the stories--as is the sometimes contradictory belief in both established religion and the supernatural.

These are not horror stories, nor are they all "ghost stories" in the truest sense of the phrase. They are, rather, a slice of Victorian life, told through the female voice with a strength that is sometimes surprising.

I enjoyed them all immensely (with the exception of the dull bit of poetry) and recommend them to any fan of Victorian lit.

Some good ghost stories, but not excellent.......2000-08-29

If you are a hard-core horror fan, this book is not for you. There are some good, classic ghost stories in here, but some stories don't seem to belong here. After finishing the book, I had the impression that they wanted a certain number of stories so insert some by women writers from the period whether the story met the criteria of ghost story or not.

The story about the Strid is one example of this. No where in there is there a ghost. It is a spooky story, but no a very good one. Seems more like some practice story that was being written.

There is a story about a family who move from Townsend's End to Boston in a house the father found at a bargain. Evidently, the house is haunted and has scared off previous renters. This is pretty formulaic. The author ends the story with a twist which doesn't follow. I don't want to give away an ending, but I was disappointed. It read like a student paper where the student realizes they have already passed the 750-word limit and now just wants to end the thing.

Book Description

Mary Ward (1851-1920) had a furiously active public career, her literary and philanthropic activities transforming her from an eminent Victorian into a pre-eminent Edwardian. The granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, she found herself at the centre of an intellectual and cultural coterie comprising the Arnold, Huxley, and Trevelyan families. Her novel, Robert Elsmere (1888), the first of a series of bestsellers, earned her both unprecedented sums of money and the critical respect of writers such as Henry James. She helped found Somerville College, Oxford, the University's first institution for the higher education of women, and inaugurated a number of play centres for the children of London's working women, despite being a fierce opponent of women's suffrage. As the first female reporter to visit the trenches in 1916, she was instrumental in bringing America into the war. Yet for all her achievements, her private life was overshadowed - often tragically so - by misfortune. Her parents's marriage was seriously affected by her father's religious doubts; she eclipsed her husband, a Times journalist and art critic, while her indolent son frittered away her financial and emotional resources. John Sutherland's fascinating study of the private suffering of this predominantly public person also provides useful insights into the restrictions placed upon women in the late-Victorian-Edwardian era. This title also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

Eminent Victorian Americans 32 Portrait Postcards

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Eminent Victorian Americans 32 Portrait Postcards

Manufacturer: The Stowe-Day Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0917482115

Product Description

This is representation of the Carte-de-Visitess of the 1850's and on.

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Eminent Victorian Women
Elizabeth Longford
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicholson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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EMINENT VICTORIANS
Unknown
Manufacturer: FOLIO SOCIETY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S5GOLQ

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