Eminent Victorians

"Eminent Victorians" is a book by Lytton Strachey (the oldest member of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine. They were:

*Cardinal Manning
*Florence Nightingale
*Thomas Arnold
*General Gordon

The book made Strachey's name and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers, where he remains.

ummary

Each of the lives are very different, although there are common threads - for example the recurrent appearance of William Gladstone. Each story is set against a specific background.

In Cardinal Manning's story, the background is the creation of the Oxford Movement and the defection of an influential group of Church of England clergy to the Catholic Church. This aspect is covered quite deeply to explain the whole movement and its main protagonists very clearly. This is a very political story, full of intrigue and manipulation around St Peters, as factions struggle for control of the English Catholic Church. Manning though intended as the hero and an achiever is shown in a poor light, and particularly poignant are the discomforts of his original mentor Cardinal Newman whom he treated very unfairly.

Strachey tried to cast Florence Nightingale as a villain who ruined people with her domination and industry, but her outstanding achievements and humility shine through. The background to her story are the machinations of the War Office, and the obtuseness of the military and politicians.

Dr Arnold is hailed as an exemplar who established the Public School system. Strachey points out that this is a education based on chapel and the classics, with a prefectorial system to maintain order. Strachey points out that it was not Arnold who was responsible for the obsession with sport, but does make it clear that Arnold was at fault in ignoring the sciences. Although Arnold was revered at the time, in retrospect his approach can only be seen as very damaging.

Finally Gordon’s is the story of a maverick soldier and adventurer, whose original military achievements in China would have been forgotten. He was a mercenary getting into and out of conflicts on behalf of various dubious governments, but much of his experience was in the Sudan. The final disaster was when the Egyptian occupation of Sudan was almost completely overthrown by fundamentalist rebels, and someone was needed to extract the residue from Khartoum. The job ended up with Gordon whose instincts were to do anything but withdraw, and so he became embroiled in a siege. The British government was put in an almost impossible dilemma, and when eventually they did send a relief expedition it arrived just two days too late. Gordon’s story, based on his diaries and letters, is a fascinating account of a strong individual almost at odds with the world.

ignificance

With the publication of "Eminent Victorians", Lytton Strachey set out to breathe life into the Victorian era for future generations to read. Up until this point, Strachey felt, Victorian biographies "(were) as familiar as the cortége of the undertaker, and wear the same air of slow, funeral barbarism."Fact|date=July 2007 Strachey defied the tradition of sprawling volumes of undigested information, and took aim on a number of iconified figures with his ironic wit; modern biographer Christopher Hitchens has been likened to him. Strachey's analysis is both humanizing and critical, but is careless with historical fact.

His chosen subjects belong firmly to the establishment. The book may be viewed as satire, and, rather than breathing life into the Victorians, was indicative of a shift in moral values.

A follow-up, "Eminent Edwardians" by Piers Brendan, was published in 1979. It follows the same format of recounting the lives of four figures who defined the era they lived in via miniature biographies.

External links

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* Lincoln Allison (Reader in Politics, University of Warwick) [http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000519.php Colourful Eminence - Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians: a Retrospective Review] Social Affairs Unit Web Review, July 2005
* [http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780192801586 OUP catalogue]