Eminent Victorians

Eminent Victorians is one of the best known books written by Lytton Strachey, English author and founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. Originally published in 1918, it consists of four biographies of leading figures in Victorian England. In his remarks in the Preface, Strachey notes that up until that point, Victorian biographies had been 'as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and wear the same air of slow, funereal barbarism.' Also by this point, he had come to the belief that those lauded in Victorian society had at best, been hypocrites who sought to claim moral superiority without true cause. The figures in the book are Cardinal Manning (the second Archbishop of Westminster), Florence Nightingale (English social reformer, and the founder of modern nursing), Thomas Arnold (English educator and historian) and General Gordon (a British Army officer and administrator who saw action in the Crimean War as an officer in the British Army). Apart from Nightingale, the others are presented in less than flattering lights. Strachey originally had the idea to do the book on twelve people, but after doing his research on Cardinal Manning, realised he would find it difficult to do that many.