Eminent Victorians

Eminent Victorians, collection of short biographical sketches by Lytton Strachey, published in 1918.

Strachey’s portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Charles “Chinese” Gordon revolutionized English biography. Until Strachey, biographers had kept an awestruck distance from their subjects; anything short of adulation was regarded as disrespect. Strachey, however, announced that he would write lives with “a brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant,” whether flattering to the subject or not. His intensely personal sketches scandalized stuffier readers but delighted many literati.

Strachey’s impressionistic portraits occasionally led to inaccuracy, since he selected the facts he liked and had little use for politics or religion, whatever role they might have played in the lives of his subjects. By portraying his “Eminent Victorians” as multifaceted, flawed human beings rather than idols, and by informing public knowledge with private information, Strachey ushered in a new era of biography.