Eminent Victorians

Rating:
Summary: Eminently wicked biographies.
Review: (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

Rating:
Summary: Eminently Readable
Review: Although the institutions that Strachey targeted are no longer in existence, that does not render this work of art irrelevant any more than the outdated and archaic language of Shakespeare render the plays irrelevant. Strachey's is the portrait of an age, as much of the early twentieth century as the nineteenth that preceded it.

Rating:
Summary: So glad I finally got around to reading this one
Review: Eminent Victorians has been on my 'to read' list for about 20 yrs, and I'm so glad I finally got around to it. Perhaps Lytton Strachey was the first to create "the new biography," not wrapping his subjects in flowery adjectives as was the style of his times, but instead skewering them with sarcastic and scathingly funny written portraits. And, as he seemed on intimate terms with Everyone Who Was Anybody during the early 1900s, his book created quite a stir. Far from confining his critiques to people, Strachey also lambasted the stilted mores, the hypocrisy, and the severely limiting lines of social strata of his era.
Although it's dated, of course, Eminent Victorians makes terrific reading for anyone interested in that era before everything changed with the First World War.

Rating:
Summary: So glad I finally got around to reading this one
Review: Eminent Victorians has been on my `to read' list for about 20 yrs, and I'm so glad I finally got around to it. Perhaps Lytton Strachey was the first to create "the new biography," not wrapping his subjects in flowery adjectives as was the style of his times, but instead skewering them with sarcastic and scathingly funny written portraits. And, as he seemed on intimate terms with Everyone Who Was Anybody during the early 1900s, his book created quite a stir. Far from confining his critiques to people, Strachey also lambasted the stilted mores, the hypocrisy, and the severely limiting lines of social strata of his era.
Although it's dated, of course, Eminent Victorians makes terrific reading for anyone interested in that era before everything changed with the First World War.

Rating:
Summary: Four lives well told
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A classic of biography.
Review: Lytton Strachey, a member of the Bloomsbury group, altered the way biographies were written with this volume of four well-known Victorians. At the time the book was published, it skewered the hypocrisies and self-assured nature of the Victorians. Even today, when we are so far removed from the Victorian age that it seems quaint and even attractive, this book's attack on the deadening effect of much of that time still rings true. And it is as readable now as it was then; Strachey was one of the wittiest men of his time, and this book is his most successful work. Interestingly, he became less iconoclastic as he grew older, and his later biography of Queen Victoria (not one of the four figures contained in Eminent Victorians) is rather respectful. If you enjoy this book (and almost anyone would), you might want to try to see the movie released several years ago titled "Carrington." It is based on a biography of Strachey by Milchael Holroyd, but is told from the point of view of a woman who fell hopelessly in love with Strachey; unfortunately for her, he was a confirmed homosexual, but she loved him anyway. Emma Thompson plays the title roal and Jonathan Pryce is an excellent Strachey.

Rating:
Summary: A classic of biography.
Review: Lytton Strachey, a member of the Bloomsbury group, altered the way biographies were written with this volume of four well-known Victorians. At the time the book was published, it skewered the hypocrisies and self-assured nature of the Victorians. Even today, when we are so far removed from the Victorian age that it seems quaint and even attractive, this book's attack on the deadening effect of much of that time still rings true. And it is as readable now as it was then; Strachey was one of the wittiest men of his time, and this book is his most successful work. Interestingly, he became less iconoclastic as he grew older, and his later biography of Queen Victoria (not one of the four figures contained in Eminent Victorians) is rather respectful. If you enjoy this book (and almost anyone would), you might want to try to see the movie released several years ago titled "Carrington." It is based on a biography of Strachey by Milchael Holroyd, but is told from the point of view of a woman who fell hopelessly in love with Strachey; unfortunately for her, he was a confirmed homosexual, but she loved him anyway. Emma Thompson plays the title roal and Jonathan Pryce is an excellent Strachey.

Rating:
Summary: All Time Classic- Worth it for Chinese Gordon Alone!
Review: Most of us here in the old "colony" have probably never heard of General Gordon. For Brits, he's a legendary eccentric military man of the late 1800's who died a hero in terrible circumstances.(At least that's what I think many Brits think..) After a brilliant career in many parts of the vast Empire, and beyond, Gen Gordon was sent to control some Islamic revolutionary jihadist types (sound familiar) led by a charismatic Mahdi (messiah). By all accounts the general was a man worthy of this assignment, and brought his small force to Khartoum to free the slaves, and rally the locals...The rest is bizarre and insane in the extreme with the good general suffering breakdowns of sorts, including having dinner with some rodent friends...When word gets to London, after political maneuvering and bickering, the people damand an expeditionary force to save Gordon and his men.Too late!! A great tragedy ensues. If there's a better short bio out there than this one, I'd read it ASAP...Florence Nightingale has a great story too, and her experiences show once again the horrors of war (this time the earlier Crimean one), and indifference of the comfortable few sitting at home by the fireplace in willful ignorance. No doubt she was a force to be reckoned with, and her ideas about clean hospitals and nursing helped change the world...This book is recommended to those looking for a different historical perspective on current events, and for nurse everywhere! The other two bios are good, but may be put aside for later.

Rating:
Summary: All Time Classic- Worth it for Chinese Gordon Alone!
Review: Most of us here in the old "colony" have probably never heard of General Gordon. For Brits, he's a legendary eccentric military man of the late 1800's who died a hero in terrible circumstances.(At least that's what I think many Brits think..) After a brilliant career in many parts of the vast Empire, and beyond, Gen Gordon was sent to control some Islamic revolutionary jihadist types (sound familiar) led by a charismatic Mahdi (messiah). By all accounts the general was a man worthy of this assignment, and brought his small force to Khartoum to free the slaves, and rally the locals...The rest is bizarre and insane in the extreme with the good general suffering breakdowns of sorts, including having dinner with some rodent friends...When word gets to London, after political maneuvering and bickering, the people damand an expeditionary force to save Gordon and his men.Too late!! A great tragedy ensues. If there's a better short bio out there than this one, I'd read it ASAP...Florence Nightingale has a great story too, and her experiences show once again the horrors of war (this time the earlier Crimean one), and indifference of the comfortable few sitting at home by the fireplace in willful ignorance. No doubt she was a force to be reckoned with, and her ideas about clean hospitals and nursing helped change the world...This book is recommended to those looking for a different historical perspective on current events, and for nurse everywhere! The other two bios are good, but may be put aside for later.

Rating:
Summary: LAUGHTER AT POMP'S EXPENSE
Review: The most famous anecdote about this book (and the one that made me aware of it) is the scene of Bertrand Russell in his prison cell incarcerated for his Pacifism during WWI laughing hysterically while reading the work. (And being henceforth rebuked by a guard for doing so in what was, after all, a penal institution.)-The other reviewers are pretty much on the mark in that Strachey set a new standard for biography.-But the piece on General Gordon surpasses all. I can see myself on death row laughing over this section.-It is in part a sad reflection on what years in the Sudan can do to an orthodox Englishman's mind. It is indeed uncanny to hear Gordon aver, on his famous expedition to save Khartoum, nearly the exact words of Baudelaire as he gazed across the perhaps too familiar desert landscape:"It is necessary to be drunken always. This is everything. This is the unique question." (my translation)-This is the aged General the sober English sent on this perilous quest. This is the man who daily battled with the question of what God's Will was for him.-What the Gordon section and the others show, of course, is that man (or woman) is not one-dimensional. Far more often, he(she)is multi-dimensional to the point of being paradoxical. The hypocritical Victorian mindset was pushed over the edge by this book.