false 108824 27 The four biographical essays that make up <I>Eminent Victorians</I> 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. <I>--Jordana Moskowitz</I> 1203789 1918 Eminent Victorians (Oxford World's Classics) total:128|5:23|4:52|3:42|2:10|1:1| 128 470 242 20 3 2 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun May 20 12:14:36 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 13 10:54:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 00:24:44 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 00:47:58 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 29 15:41:20 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 15:44:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 25 22:48:45 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 15:01:43 -0700 2008 Eminent Victorians (1918), wittily, Wilde-ishly distorts the character and accomplishments of four noble worthies -- Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold,...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Nov 14 00:55:45 -0800 2007 Sat Jul 26 19:14:35 -0700 2008
'He was welcomed by many old friends of former days, among them Li Hung Chan...more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Jun 10 11:20:23 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 11:20:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Mar 27 13:49:41 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 27 13:50:30 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 12:35:29 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 12:36:23 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Aug 28 04:36:51 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 28 04:43:11 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 20 07:11:45 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 20 07:16:16 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Jul 06 18:56:22 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 07 09:32:13 -0700 2008 - Lytton Strac...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Tue Feb 05 21:16:07 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 05 21:17:51 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Thu Feb 15 18:07:59 -0800 2007 Fri May 11 05:07:47 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Sat Aug 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 23 18:41:32 -0700 2008 Fri Jan 23 18:59:15 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Apr 05 22:07:35 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 14 18:21:45 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Wed Jun 18 18:53:26 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 18 18:55:23 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1994 Thu Mar 20 19:10:08 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 20 19:10:51 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 13:02:28 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 13:03:08 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Fri Jul 06 17:34:40 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 06 17:35:14 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Wed Oct 15 16:44:21 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 10 11:15:37 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 15 16:44:21 -0700 2008