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youarenotthewalrus's review against another edition
funny
informative
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
irreverentreader's review against another edition
2.0
Oof. This has been my hardest book to get through this year. WHAT A SLOG.
History is one of my favorite subjects, and yet Strachey made what should have been an interesting foray into four separate accounts of famous Victorians a real snooze-fest. My one caveat is that had the reader had a basic knowledge of these individuals beforehand, it could have been more interesting. I think Strachey assumed that his audience would be aptly familiar and did not spend much time setting the stage for each of them, which made it difficult to care about any of them.
I think this is why I did enjoy the Florence Nightingale section, for it really expanded on what I already knew and shown a light on a different side of her. However, the sections of Cardinal Manning, Dr Arnold, and General Gordon were tragically boring, and I thought many times to abandon the novel. Strachey has zero idea of what constitutes a good length of paragraph; sometimes they would go on for pages. And while there was the occasional, enjoyable witticism, they were over run by his sheer verbosity on the most inane of details.
This is one of those books that as soon as I finished reading, I pretty much forgot everything that I had read.
History is one of my favorite subjects, and yet Strachey made what should have been an interesting foray into four separate accounts of famous Victorians a real snooze-fest. My one caveat is that had the reader had a basic knowledge of these individuals beforehand, it could have been more interesting. I think Strachey assumed that his audience would be aptly familiar and did not spend much time setting the stage for each of them, which made it difficult to care about any of them.
I think this is why I did enjoy the Florence Nightingale section, for it really expanded on what I already knew and shown a light on a different side of her. However, the sections of Cardinal Manning, Dr Arnold, and General Gordon were tragically boring, and I thought many times to abandon the novel. Strachey has zero idea of what constitutes a good length of paragraph; sometimes they would go on for pages. And while there was the occasional, enjoyable witticism, they were over run by his sheer verbosity on the most inane of details.
This is one of those books that as soon as I finished reading, I pretty much forgot everything that I had read.
pbobrit's review against another edition
4.0
I love Lytton's writing style. Smooth, witty, and insightful. This "biography" of four famous Victorians, Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale and General Gordon, shines a light on the institutions they represented. One for fans of Bloomsbury and those with an interest in an alternative take on those famous Victorians.
alexsiddall's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful writing. General Gordon and Florence Nightingale stand out as names which have remained alive for another hundred years since Strachey wrote this; Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold have merged more into history. The portraits are vivid and incisively presented, and Strachey's judgements, while perceptive, reflect the ethos of his times. It was a pleasure to reread this nearly 50 years after my first reading.
mkesten's review against another edition
5.0
So many great biobraphies owe their lineage to Lytton Strachey's classic Eminent Victorians, the original de-bunking biography.
lazygal's review against another edition
4.0
Years ago I read the A.N. Wilson Victorians and vowed that one day I'd read the "original", and now I have.
Of the four people profiled, I'd only really heard of Florence Nightingale; Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold and General Gordon were complete unknowns to me. Strachey has written profiles, often biased ones (and those biases show), rather than biographies, so there is some background and context missing. As for bias, when writing about Cardinal Manning he talks about John Henry Cardinal Newman as being broken and virtually inconsequential after his conversion which is not quite true. The thread that runs through all four is William Gladstone, who appears as friend, MP and Prime Minister, not always in a good light.
This was not the easiest of reads, and I spent time looking up people and events that would have been common knowledge back when the book was written. The use of French, Latin and Greek, untranslated, was also a reminder that this was written in a very different time.
Of the four people profiled, I'd only really heard of Florence Nightingale; Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold and General Gordon were complete unknowns to me. Strachey has written profiles, often biased ones (and those biases show), rather than biographies, so there is some background and context missing. As for bias, when writing about Cardinal Manning he talks about John Henry Cardinal Newman as being broken and virtually inconsequential after his conversion which is not quite true. The thread that runs through all four is William Gladstone, who appears as friend, MP and Prime Minister, not always in a good light.
This was not the easiest of reads, and I spent time looking up people and events that would have been common knowledge back when the book was written. The use of French, Latin and Greek, untranslated, was also a reminder that this was written in a very different time.
markfeltskog's review
Strachey was a masterful prose stylist, and everything you've heard about this fascinating portrait of four representative figures of Victorian England broke new ground in biographical method. Strachey moved away from mammoth hagiographies to quick--but thorough--critical essays on his subjects, Highly recommended.
sophiahelix's review against another edition
3.0
Like The Wasteland, this pretty much requires you to have had a first-rate education around the turn of the twentieth century to fully enjoy and comprehend it, but there's some witty writing and it's interesting from a meta-commentary perspective, since Strachey is tweaking the noses of some of the idols of the late Victorian era.