{"product_id":"eminent-victorians-isbn-9780140183504","title":"Eminent Victorians","description":"\u003cb\u003eA genre-changing work of biography\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEminent Victorians\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Eminent VictoriansIntroduction\u003cbr\u003ePreface\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCardinal Manning\u003cbr\u003eFlorence Nightingale\u003cbr\u003eDr Arnold\u003cbr\u003eThe End of General Gordon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eLytton Strachey\u003c\/b\u003e, whose iconoclastic reexaminations of historical figures forever changed the course of modern biographical writing, was born in London on March 1, 1880. He was educated in a series of private schools and attended University College, Liverpool, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1899. In London he found work as an essayist for various journals and became the drama critic for \u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e. The favorable reception of his first book, \u003ci\u003eLandmarks in French Literature\u003c\/i\u003e (1912), bolstered his commitment to writing. Virginia Woolf said: \"The figure of Lytton Strachey is so important a figure in the history of biography that it compels a pause. For his three famous books, \u003ci\u003eEminent Victorians\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eQueen Victoria\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eElizabeth and Essex\u003c\/i\u003e, are of a stature to show both what biography can do and what biography cannot do. . . . The anger and the interest that his short studies of \u003ci\u003eEminent Victorians\u003c\/i\u003e aroused showed that he was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and the rest live as they had not lived since they were actually in the flesh. . . . In the lives of the two great Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, he attempted a far more ambitious task. Biography had never had a fairer chance of showing what it could do. For it was now being put to the test by a writer who was capable of making use of all the liberties that biography had won.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichael Holroyd\u003c\/b\u003e has written acclaimed biographies of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw, and Lytton Strachey as well as two memoirs, \u003ci\u003eBasil Street\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlues,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMosaic\u003c\/i\u003e. Holroyd is the president emeritus of the Royal Society of Literature, knighted for his services to literature and the only nonfiction writer to have received the David Cohen British Prize for Literature. His book, \u003ci\u003eA Strange Eventful History\u003c\/i\u003e, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 2009. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.","brand":"Penguin Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301173350629,"sku":"NP9780140183504","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780140183504.jpg?v=1767726211","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/eminent-victorians-isbn-9780140183504","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}