"Whether or not its immediate success may be ascribed the post-war disillusionment with formerly accepted values and institutions, Eminent Victorians rapidly and solidly established itself as a biographical classic. Rarely, if ever, had psychological penetration, a talent for dramatic depiction of character, and a brilliant style been employed together to better effect. In the space of two hundred pages, by what Asquith called his "subtle and suggestive art," Strachey succeeded in re-absorbing English biography into the realm of literature. Not that the chorus of acclaim was unanimous or wholehearted. Almost everyone, then and now, was and is willing to grant Strachey stylistic excellence. But in the forty years since the first appearance of Eminent Victorians, the book has been under more or less continuous and vehement attack; and has, in turn, been no less vigorously defended."
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Historians from EnglandEssayists from EnglandLiterary criticsPoets from EnglandBiographers from the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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John Clive, 'More or Less Eminent Victorians: Some Trends in Recent Victorian Biography', Victorian Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (September 1958), p. 7
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lytton_Strachey
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Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English biographer, critic and leading light of the Bloomsbury group. He is seen by some as the founder of the modern "debunking" school of biography.
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