Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians

Julie Taddeo (The University of Maryland)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication May 1918

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Biography (literary)

Resources

Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians was published by Chatto and Windus in May 1918. Comprising four mini-biographies (Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Matthew Arnold, and General Gordon), Strachey’s book used satire and irreverent humor to undermine the pillars of the Victorian establishment represented by each of his subjects: religion, humanitarianism, education, and imperialism. An immediate best-seller, Eminent Victorians spoke to a war-weary population which, like Strachey (1880-1932), blamed the devastation of the Great War (1914-18) in part on the values of his parents’ generation.

As one of the founders of the modernist Bloomsbury Group that included his fellow ‘Cambridge …

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2272 words

Citation: Taddeo, Julie. "Eminent Victorians". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 October 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=29472, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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