Farwell provides profiles of eight Victorian military officers--men who helped create the British Empire and whose lives reflect the age. Photos.

Lytton Strachey was a founder of the famed Bloomsbury Group, an influential group of intellectuals and writers in wartime England. Considered a masterpiece of biographical writing, "Eminent Victorians" examines the lives of four important figures representative of the Victorian era. This 1918 work is noted for its irreverent sense of realism toward generally celebrated individuals. "Eminent Victorians" looks at the Catholic leader Cardinal Manning, the author and nurse Florence Nightingale, the Catholic reformer Thomas Arnold, and the British Army officer Charles George Gordon. The book was a popular and commercial success, establishing Strachey's writing career. His inventive form of biography was not greeted with total acclaim. Many found his treatment of his subjects to be offensive and unduly critical. His attribution of a realist psychology to his characters left many unnerved. Yet it is this tone that gives the work its texture and energy-a truly artistic work of biography from one of the most modern minds of the early 20th century. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Evaluates the lives and times of four people.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time "Eminent Victorians" marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it, Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of Cardinal Manning and the manipulative, neurotic Florence Nightingale; and in his essays on Dr Arnold and General Gordon, his quarries are not only his subjects but also the public-school system and the whole structure of nineteenth-century liberal values.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Eminent Victorians is a groundbreaking work of biography that raised the genre to the level of high art. It replaced reverence with skepticism and Strachey's wit, iconoclasm, and narrative skill liberated the biographical enterprise. His portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon changed perceptions of the Victorians for a generation. Lytton Strachey's biographical essays on four "eminent Victorians" dropped an explosive charge on Victorian England when the book was published in 1918. It ushered in the modern biography and raised the genre to the level of high literary art. Strachey approached his subjects with skepticism rather than reverence, and his iconoclastic wit and engaging narratives thrilled as well as shocked his contemporaries. Debunking Church, Public School and Empire, his portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and General Gordon of Khartoum changed perceptions of the Victorians for a generation. This edition is unique in being fully annotated and in drawing on the full range of Strachey's manuscript materials and literary remains.