Eminent Victorians

An unparalleled manifesto for the modern biographer, Lytton Strachey's razor-sharp essays about four prominent Victorians brought him tremendous fame. However, the great pacifist's subjects did not fare as well. Strachey skewers the legends glorifying Florence Nightingale, educator Thomas Arnold, Cardinal Henry Manning, and military hero General Charles "Chinese" Gordon. His incisive portraits challenge the nineteenth-century's preeminent values: humanitarianism, liberalism, evangelicism, a...