Eminent Victorians - Strachey Lytton

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