Community hub
Recent from talks
Contribute something to knowledge base
Content stats: 0 posts, 0 articles, 0 media, 0 notes
Members stats: 0 subscribers, 0 contributors, 0 moderators, 0 supporters
Subscribers
Supporters
Contributors
Moderators
Hub AI
Eminent Victorians AI simulator
(@Eminent Victorians_simulator)
Hub AI
Eminent Victorians AI simulator
(@Eminent Victorians_simulator)
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four well known figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had until then been regarded as heroes: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Charles Gordon. While Nightingale is actually praised and her reputation enhanced, the book shows its other subjects in a less-than-flattering light, for instance, the intrigues of Cardinal Manning against Cardinal Newman.
The book made Strachey's name and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers.
Strachey developed the idea for Eminent Victorians in 1912, when he was living on occasional journalism and writing dilettante plays and verse for his Bloomsbury friends. He went to live in the country at East Ilsley and started work on a book then called Victorian Silhouettes, containing miniature biographies of a dozen notable Victorian personalities. In November 1912, he wrote to Virginia Woolf that their Victorian predecessors "seem to me a set of mouth bungled hypocrites". After his research into the life of Cardinal Manning, he realised he would have difficulty managing twelve lives. In the following year he moved to Wiltshire, where he stayed until 1915, by which time he had completed half the book. One of the subjects he considered but rejected was Isabella Beeton. He chose not to write about her because he could not find sufficient relevant material.
By then it was wartime, and Strachey's anti-war and anti-conscription activities were taking up his time. He hardened his views and concluded that the Victorian worthies had not just been hypocrites, but that they had bequeathed to his generation the "profoundly evil" system, "by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force".
By 1917, the work was ready for publication and Strachey was put in touch with Geoffrey Whitworth at Chatto & Windus. The critic Frank Arthur Swinnerton was taken with the work and it was published on 9 May 1918, with almost uniformly enthusiastic reviews.
Each of the lives is very different from the others, although there are common threads, for example the recurrent appearance of William Ewart Gladstone and Arthur Hugh Clough. Each story is set against a specific background.
In Cardinal Manning's story, the background is the creation of the Oxford Movement and the defection of an influential group of Church of England clergy to the Catholic Church. That is covered in depth to explain the Movement and its main protagonists, particularly Manning's hostile relationship with John Henry Newman. Strachey is critical of Manning's underhanded manipulations in attempting to prevent Newman being made a Cardinal.
The background features of Florence Nightingale's story are the machinations of the War Office, and the obtuseness of the military and politicians. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Strachey depicts Florence Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who is both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements.
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four well known figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had until then been regarded as heroes: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Charles Gordon. While Nightingale is actually praised and her reputation enhanced, the book shows its other subjects in a less-than-flattering light, for instance, the intrigues of Cardinal Manning against Cardinal Newman.
The book made Strachey's name and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers.
Strachey developed the idea for Eminent Victorians in 1912, when he was living on occasional journalism and writing dilettante plays and verse for his Bloomsbury friends. He went to live in the country at East Ilsley and started work on a book then called Victorian Silhouettes, containing miniature biographies of a dozen notable Victorian personalities. In November 1912, he wrote to Virginia Woolf that their Victorian predecessors "seem to me a set of mouth bungled hypocrites". After his research into the life of Cardinal Manning, he realised he would have difficulty managing twelve lives. In the following year he moved to Wiltshire, where he stayed until 1915, by which time he had completed half the book. One of the subjects he considered but rejected was Isabella Beeton. He chose not to write about her because he could not find sufficient relevant material.
By then it was wartime, and Strachey's anti-war and anti-conscription activities were taking up his time. He hardened his views and concluded that the Victorian worthies had not just been hypocrites, but that they had bequeathed to his generation the "profoundly evil" system, "by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force".
By 1917, the work was ready for publication and Strachey was put in touch with Geoffrey Whitworth at Chatto & Windus. The critic Frank Arthur Swinnerton was taken with the work and it was published on 9 May 1918, with almost uniformly enthusiastic reviews.
Each of the lives is very different from the others, although there are common threads, for example the recurrent appearance of William Ewart Gladstone and Arthur Hugh Clough. Each story is set against a specific background.
In Cardinal Manning's story, the background is the creation of the Oxford Movement and the defection of an influential group of Church of England clergy to the Catholic Church. That is covered in depth to explain the Movement and its main protagonists, particularly Manning's hostile relationship with John Henry Newman. Strachey is critical of Manning's underhanded manipulations in attempting to prevent Newman being made a Cardinal.
The background features of Florence Nightingale's story are the machinations of the War Office, and the obtuseness of the military and politicians. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Strachey depicts Florence Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who is both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements.