Eminent Victorians

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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:

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

[edit] Significance

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." Strachey defied the tradition of sprawling volumes of undigested information, and took aim on a number of iconified figures with his ironic wit. Strachey's analysis is both humanizing and critical, and takes place more in the realm of thoughts than in a general timeline.