A genre-changing work of biography
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.
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