Quotes from book
Eminent Victorians

Name: Eminent Victorians
Author: Lytton Strachey

Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , 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 until then been regarded as heroes: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon .

“It is not [the biographer's] business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case, as he understands them…dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior motives.”

Lytton Strachey book Eminent Victorians

Preface.
Eminent Victorians (1918)

“The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England. … With us, the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing has been relegated to the journeymen of letters; we do not reflect that it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.”

Lytton Strachey book Eminent Victorians

Preface.
Eminent Victorians (1918)

“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian – ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.”

Lytton Strachey book Eminent Victorians

Preface.
Eminent Victorians (1918)