Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

bravo, mr strachey!
lytton strachey is my favorite non-fiction writer. he writes non-fiction that is flawless and beautiful. some of the writing in this book is as good as any writing i've seen anywhere. but who cares? who cares? what a shameful culture has been fashioned that has no room for this.

Pioneering biography
This life of Queen Victoria set a new standard for biographies when it was written and it still reads very well today. To the modern ear some of Strachey's language may at times be a bit dry. That aside this is an excellent study of the development of Victoria from infancy to old age. The entanglement's of family and the influence of key ministers is well covered and documented . Especially interesting is the treatment of Prince Albert and the Queen's relationship.
I found this to be quite an informative book and would highly recommend it to anyone with a curiosity regarding this period of British history.

queen victoria by Lytton Strachey
I purchased this book at a library sale and it has no copywrit date other then the 1921 date published by Harcourt, Grace &World,Inc and renewed by Jame Strachey, with no renewal date. The copy I have has 434 pages which include an index of subject matter.The only other used books mentioned for sale have acopywrit of 1981 and have 100 less pages.This book is in very good condition and has the original cover jacket.It begins its historic tale in 1817 and includes footnotes at the bottom of the page.

still one of the best things around
strachey became famous for his 'eminent victorians' which has the reputation for being a hatchet job-but he was looking at the previous generation from the disillusioned, post-WWI perspective, and he treats florence nightingale et al more like prodigies than monsters. when he undertook to write about the eponymous queen herself, people expected it would be another exercise in target practice-even his mother tried to discourage him, saying that 'if she was stupid, it was not her fault.' But in the event what he produced is one of the most sympathetic, if slightly condescending, biographies ever written-and absolutely one of the most accomplished. it is a chronicle of victoria's 60+-year-long political career and emotional life, a series of portraits of all the personalities in her life-including albert, his curious replacement john brown, disraeli-him, it is true, strachey clearly did not like-a completely non-pedantic reflection on the growth and eventual shrinkage of the british empire during her reign-and the whole thing is done so subtly, so gracefully-and, at the same time, so forcefully-that you may find yourself talking about nothing else but this book and queen victoria for days afterward. one of the most successful marriages of rigorous scholarship and beautiful style in english literature.

Interesting portrait of a queen
A readable and fairly brief account of Victoria.Frequent passages fromVictoria's girlhood diary and letters make Victoria's early lifeparticularly vivid reading.Also fascinating is Victoria's relationshipwith her government, and her tendency to cling to the current primeminister and despise the Opposition, whoever they might be.

The enigmaticPrince Albert, and his evolving relationship with Victoria, is presentedwell.Strachey makes some startling suggestions about what Britain mighthave turned into, had Albert lived longer (answer: Prussia).

This bookis elegantly written, and free of the psychobabble one might expect from amore modern book.

The book is not boring.Although Victoria is alwaysproper, there is plenty of adultery and dysfunctional family behavior amongher many adult children. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1918, this work revolutionized modern biography with its slightly caricatured, witty descriptions of four eminent Victorians, Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr Arnold and General Gordon. Lytton Strachey removed the Victorian heroes from their pedestals, revealing them as flawed and sometimes unattractive human beings. Strachey chose four complementary characters and through them explored the dynamics of the Victorian era. All four were deeply religious, channelling keen personal ambition through ideals of service and duty. All four had become figures of popular veneration, whose legends highlighted the prejudices, hopes and follies of the Victorians. This new edition is enhanced by colour and black and white illustrations. ... Read more

Product Description
Lavish illustrations show Queen Victoria, her kin, and life in England and abroad during her reign. Illustrated spreads beautifully depict the great men and women of the time, Victoria's love for Albert, the Great Exhibition of 1851, Balmoral Castle, and scenes of the British Empire at its finest. This classic is republished for the first time in an illustrated gift format. 250 color and b&w illustrations and photos . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

What a waste of money...
...on the part of the publisher and author to get something this great in print and fail to have it professionally edited. The cost of the color plates, binding, and printing must have been enormous, and the thing reads like a 6th-grade paper that hasn't been proofed. Pity.

Classic narrative destroyed by atrocious editing
This book was sloppily produced.Typographical errors permeate.There are distracting mistakes in some of the captions, too, such as that for a picture of a gray bearded, corpulent Prince of Wales supposedly taken in 1863 when he would have been a man in his early twenties (p. 205). The author -- and his subject -- deserve much better.The publisher deserves a spanking.

Wonderfully illustrated, entertaining.
This book is a "must have" for anyone interested in royalty or history in general. It's a lovely book in a scaled down coffee table format. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Letterati
I'm not quite sure what I can say here to someone considering this volume and not already a devotee of that rum Bloomsbury lot.I should say this collection is, by turns, tedious and droll.Also, as to editor Paul Levy, while he performs admirably in his assiduous task of indentifying all the now forgotten personages in these letters, he also makes clear his own viewpoints: He thinks that Strachey should like Joyce's Ulysses, but Strachey doesn't.He thinks Strachey shouldn't like Bertrand Russell, Strachey does, etc. - It's not exactly disinterested scholarship in which Levy indulges himself herein. - Also, especially in the early going here, there is much ado about buggery and more buggery (I think I can get away with mentioning this fact, so stated, in an American review.)Just, you know, be forewarned.

As one would expect from the author of Eminent Victorians, there are some succulent bon mots here:

The economist John Maynard Keys is described thusly: "That there should be anyone in the world so utterly devoid of poetry is sufficiently distracting;" The younger "Great War" poems and writers are given this flip evaluation: "It seems appropriate that they should all have such watery names, these young fellows.There's Brooke and Drinkwater and De la Mare - what can one hope from such an assemblage? - Except that they'll be patronized by a Marsh!"

But, on the whole, this selection of missives has left me rather flat.It seems to me that one learns much more about Strachey by reading Eminent Victorians than by reading these quotidian, sometimes rebarbative, letters.I feel, having spent a week reading this lengthy collection, almost exactly as Strachey says he does in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell after reading a book about "The Souls", a now forgotten group of 19th Century wits: "As usual, it struck me that letters were the only satisfactory form of literature.They give one the facts so amazingly, don't they?I felt when I got to the end that I'd lived for years in that set.But oh dearie me I'm glad that I'm NOT in it!"

Indeed!

The original slacker
Lytton Strachey, largely forgotten now, was once famous for his biographical sketches, which today look like crude caricatures; for his style, which today seems mechanical and gimmicky; and for his literary criticism, so perverse it is as entertaining now as it has ever been.One of his heroes was Pope (not the Holy Father, but the 18th century English poet who has since slipped into oblivion and will not be troubling us again).

In this volume, Paul Levy provides succinct, useful and not overly tendentious annotations for the letters he has selected from Strachey's voluminous correspondence.The letters themselves are disappointing, consisting mostly of bland gossip interspersed with feeble ("yo mama") put-downs that do nothing to enhance Strachey's reputation for fearsomeness.In fact, when fame and fortune descend on Strachey mid-way through this volume he begins to mellow out and in time becomes almost sweet.But with the advent of the sinister Senhouse the letters become disturbing, and remain so, right to the bitter end.

If one takes these letters at face value, Strachey is forever going to parties in order to subject himself to the conversation of imbeciles and terrible bores.(He seems to get huge enjoyment out of making nasty remarks about anyone and everyone--surely a dangerous occupation for a valetudinarian bookworm who resembles nothing so much as a grasshopper.Small wonder he is so out of sympathy with his doppelganger, Aldous Huxley!)He pretends to despise the upper classes and the rich, whose hospitality he regularly accepts.(In a letter to his mom, he gleefully boasts that he is off for "a weekend at the Duchess of Marlborough's!")

In these letters, Strachey shows himself to be thoroughly bourgeois, whether he is bemoaning the loss of his custom-tailored shirts, being exasperated at the servants, gloating over his book sales or luxuriating in his grand new bed in his comfortable country home.

To be fair to him, though, his complacency and superciliousness do now and again give way to an acute consciousness of his limitations, as a writer and as a person.And the reader who can endure the tedium and soldier on to the end of the book will find it difficult not to feel some sympathy for a man who, convinced deep down he was unlovable, so desperately longed to be loved.

Fascinating correspondence by one of Bloomsbury's most eloquent and interesting members
These letters by Lytton Strachey, writer and member of the Bloomsbury group of artists, reveal much about the man, the time in which he lived, and the circle of artists with which he surrounded himself. I've read several reviews about this book in which Strachey is described as an old maid of a man spending his time doing nothing but reading books and complaining about his health. However, this collection of his personal correspondence reveals him to be much more complex than that.

In several ways he seems to be a very tragic figure. For one, he is deeply in love with someone with whom, due to his homosexuality, he will never be sexually compatible - Dora Carrington - and he is sexually compatible with a series of people with whom the love part of the relationship never quite comes off. Although his many letters to Carrington often talk about his travels and the practical matters of the household that they shared for 15 years, there are at least three or four that are genuine love letters uncomparable to any that he wrote to any of his lovers, including Roger Senhouse, with whom he was involved the last six or so years of his life.

The other great tragedy of Strachey's life was the misdiagnosis of his final illness, a stomach cancer that grew until it ultimately perforated his colon and killed him in 1932. According to his letters, he began to have signs of this illness starting in 1929, but his various physicians always attributed his vague symptoms to a series of minor ailments, usually prescribing such things as suppositories and doing nothing more to properly diagnose and treat the problem. Strachey did suffer bouts of illness throughout his life, and perhaps the fact that he had never suffered from anything serious before caused his physicians to not take him seriously when he did finally become gravely ill.

Strachey is at his best in his correspondence when he is pouring out his heart about something for which he cares deeply. For example, he writes some very elegant prose on his attitudes toward the first World War, why he was against it, and why he was willing to go to jail rather than serve its cause. I only wish that more of his correspondence had been about current events in England during his lifetime. His approach to the whole matter of refusing to serve in the war effort was a risky one, since he refused to be dishonest and just say that he was against all wars - he wasn't. He was simply adamantly opposed to this one particular war. On top of that, he was asking for a medical exemption based on his poor health that would find him completely unfit for service, even a desk job on the home front.Miraculously, he pulls this off and is found totally medically unfit, although the exact diagnosis of the military doctors is not given in his correspondence. This leads to one of the great conundrums of Strachey's life - how could someone who claimed to be so ill and who also convinced the military of this manage to travel throughout Europe as he often did and even embark on strenuous walking tours such as the one he took with Dora Carrington in Wales the same year he was exempted from military service?

Strachey has an intriguing and very often mischievous writing style whether he is gossiping about the personal lives of the other members of Bloomsbury, talking about his own work and his feelings toward its quality, or giving his opinion about the artistic works of the other members of Bloomsbury. If you are the least bit interested in the Bloomsbury group of artists, about Lytton Strachey himself, or the times in which Strachey lived, I highly recommend this collection of letters.

More Insight into the World of Bloomsbury
This is quite an interesting collection of Strachey's letters, covering the entire period of his life (1880-1932), but most were written after 1900.Today, Strachey is most familiar as a result of Holroyd's fine biography and the film "Carrington." But as I have mentioned in other Amazon reviews, reading a subject's letters to me is the best way to really understand the person, whether it be Henry Adams, Hannah Arendt, or Justice Holmes. The collection is replete with letters to such Bloomsbury personages as Virginia Woolf, Keynes, Ottoline Morrell, James Strachey, Duncan Grant, E.M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, Desmond MacCarthy, Clive Bell, and of course Dora Carrington. Along the way we learn much about the Cambridge Apostles, Strachey's working patterns, and his sexual proclivities. The editor (author of the fine biography of G.E. Moore and co-executor of Strachey's literary estate) has a definitive command of the personalities involved, the larger context of England during this first third of the 20th century, and the intellectual world in which Strachey functioned. His notes crisply identify ambiguous references in the letters and add a lot to the enjoyment of the volume.A very useful addition to the literature on Bloomsbury. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.Amazon.com Review
The four biographical essays that make up Eminent Victorians createdsomething of a stir when they were first published in the spring of 1918,bringing their author instant fame. In his flamboyant collection, LyttonStrachey chose to stray far from the traditional mode of biography: "Thosetwo fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate the dead--whodoes not know them, with their ill-digested masses of material, theirslipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack ofselection, of detachment, of design?" Instead he provided impressionisticbut acute (and, some said, skewed) portraits. Rarely does Strachey explorethe details of a subject's daily or family life unless they point directlyto an issue of character. In short, he pioneered a deeply sardonic andoften scathingly funny biographical style.

None of Strachey's Victorians emerge unscathed. In his hands, FlorenceNightingale is not a gentle archangel descended from heaven to ministersweetly to wounded soldiers, but rather an exacting, dictatorial, andjudgmental crusader. Her "pen, in the virulence of its volubility, wouldrush ... to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of aself-sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials withthe deadly and unsparing precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames wereterrible. She respected no one." Dr. Thomas Arnold, the man appointed torevamp the very private British public school system, fares little better:in Strachey's acid ink, he became "the founder of the worship of athleticsand the worship of good form." In this same vain, military hero GeneralGordon is portrayed as a temperamental, irascible hermit, occasionallydrunk and often found in the company of young boys--a man who tended toforget and forgo the tenets found in the Bible he kept with him always. Andthe powerful and popular Cardinal Manning, who came within a hair's breadthof succeeding Pope Pius IX, belonged, Strachey writes, "to that class ofeminent ecclesiastics ... who have been distinguished less for saintlinessand learning than for practical ability."

As he offered up indelible sketches of his less-than-fab four, Strachey wasintent on critiquing established mores. This effortlessly superior wit knewfull well that deep convictions and good deeds often go hand in hand withhypocrisy, arrogance, and egomania. His task was to pique those whopretended they did not. --Jordana Moskowitz ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

The Victorians Were Never the Same
Lytton Strachey is credited with reinventing the art of writing biographies in his brilliant Eminent Victorians. Strachey published the book in 1918, not long after the end of the Victorian Era. Rather than attempt a comprehensive history of the Victorian Era, which he viewed as impossible, Strachey instead wrote short biographies of four truly eminent Victorians that punctured the moral pretensions and historical myths of that famous era.

Strachey's subjects are barely remembered today. I suppose Florence Nightingale's name has some small current familiarity because of its association with selflessly nursing injured soldiers. I found her biography to be the flattest of them all. She came from a privileged background, stubbornly resisted her parents' efforts to marry her off, and exerted remarkable energy, persistence, and fortitude to accomplish significant changes in military medicine (which previously languished in a horrific state).

Strachey's Dr. Arnold is a cautious educational reformer at best, rather than the revered innovator who established the English Public School system. The education provided at Arnold's Rugby School was quite limited with a dreary focus on religion and the classics. The sciences were entirely neglected. He did establish the prefectorial system whereby the old boys terrorized the younger boys who in their turn got to terrorize the next batch. Readers of Flashman will recognize Dr. Arnold as the head of the school that produced Tom Brown (and kicked Flashman out for drunkenness).

Strachey's treatment of the life of Cardinal Manning is fascinating although the subject is arcane. Even in 1918 when Strachey wrote his book he said that few remembered Manning.The Pope's recent visit to the UK highlighted one Manning's archrivals, Cardinal Newman. Both Manning and Newman had risen high in the Anglican hierarchy when the Oxford Movement gradually led them to doubt that Henry VIII had been divinely inspired when he founded that church. Both converted to Catholicism, but the politically astute Manning managed a meteoric rise to Cardinal (with the connivance of the Pope's top assistant) while Newman languished in obscurity. Newman had ideas and ideas were threatening and indeed essentially heretical to Pio Nono, Pius IX (the pope who formally decreed papal infallibility). Only in his dotage was Newman gifted the red hat when the Duke of Norfolk intervened with the Pope on his behalf. Strachey's life of Cardinal Manning is simply a treat of wonderful writing, wit, with a thorough skewering of papal pomposity.

The highlight of Eminent Victorians, for me, was the final biography of General Gordon, in which Strachey blows apart the mythology surrounding Gordon and indeed the Empire. Gordon had been hired by the leaders of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion to lead the Ever Victorious Army, which as Strachey notes had been seldom victorious prior to Gordon's ascendancy. Gordon famously dispatched the rebels.

Gordon later served as British governor-general of the Sudan, but more often worked as a mercenary. He had returned to England and relative obscurity when the Mahdi Revolt broke out in the Sudan (see Mahdi Revolt). Gladstone wanted nothing more than to exit the Sudan, but he needed someone self-effacing with diplomatic skill for the job. Conservative elements in Gladstone's own government hit upon Gordon as the ideal man for the job. It is difficult to imagine any person less suited for the task of withdrawing than the strong-willed, idiosyncratic, and mercurial Gordon. With the appointment made, the die was cast: Gordon arrived in Khartoum, decided he could not abandon those fine people, and ended up a martyr when the city was predictably overrun (refusing numerous opportunities to leave for safety). The Gordon biography is simply high art.

Bertrand Russell described Eminent Victorians as "brilliant, delicious, exquisitely civilized".I agree completely. Read it.

Classic
I gather this is a classic of biography.

I recently re-discovered Lytton Strachey, and am loving his work.

I understand his debunking of Victorian icons was shocking at the time.Ninety years on, his portraits seem basically fair and sympathetic to me.

Lytton Strachey is rolling in his grave.
This Wilder Publications edition of Eminent Victorians is the most poorly edited mess I have ever stopped reading. Gayle Turner

Excellent biographies; flawed commentary
John Sutherland's full commentary remedies the one defect - carelessness with factual detail - that mars Strachey's fascinating and informative biography of four eminent Victorians. However, Sutherland himself, like all other commentators I have read, has a serious fault, which could distort readers' understanding of what Strachey was doing. He assumes that Strachey "spectacularly subverted the certainties on which the Victorian age was founded" (page viii); that he "portrayed" "all four" as "neurotics"; was "examining the dark and dirty labyrinth of Victorian unconsciousness" (page xi); that he "spatters" "ridicule" on his subjects (Page xii); or, as the blurb on the back cover alleges, "Debunking Church, Public School, and Empire ..."
Strachey says in his preface that his biographies differ from "[t]hose fat two volumes ... with their tone of tedious panegyric." Anyone who has read Monypenny and Buckle's SIX volume biography of Disraeli, which goes out of its way to attribute to Disraeli every imaginable virtue (e.g., he loved children), knows what Strachey means.
However, if the reader ignores the allegations of generations of commentators and looks at what Strachey wrote without preconception, he will see that he admired all four of his subjects and meant for his readers to admire them. "[A] perfect English gentleman" is the way Strachey describes Sydney Herbert (page 121), and Strachey's description of him in that paragraph and the following pages shows that he meant that as the highest praise. Strachey even treats with impartiality and often empathy the aspect of Victorian life that by the time he was writing must have already seemed strange: the centrality of "old time religion" in the thought and lives of educated Victorians. (From the inception of printing through the year 1900, more books were published in the United Kingdom on religion than on all other subjects combined.)
Different as Strachey's subjects are from each other, they have one thing in common. All were rebels. Manning deserted the Church of England, one of the central pillars of the Victorian establishment. Nightingale defied the expectations of the way an upper-class woman should lead her life to challenge relentlessly and adamantly the British army and radically reform the nursing profession and army hospitals. Arnold radically reformed another bastion of the establishment: the public (i.e., private) schools. Gordon was an eccentric loner, who followed the opposite policy from the one he was sent to Khartoum to implement.
Nevertheless, all were greatly admired by those whom they led or cared for: Manning by British Catholics, Nightingale by the soldiers under her supervision, Arnold by his students (page 165), and Gordon by the people of the Sudan (page 208). More strikingly, these rebels, radicals, and eccentrics were heroes of British society; they were "eminent Victorians" in their own time. This fact must force the reader to re-assess one of the most prevalent stereotypes about the Victorians: their supposed insistence on conventionality and conformity.
In fact, Strachey achieved what Collingwood stated was the goal of history in his classic study The Idea of History (pages 231-49). He reconstructed a plausible and coherent account of what his four subjects (and several of the people with whom they interacted) were like, what motivated them, what "made them tick." It must be added (and this also fulfilled Collingwood's requirement) that Strachey's account is not plausible of human beings in general. Rather, it is historically plausible; it is plausible considering the specific time and place in which his subjects lived; and by providing it, Strachey illuminated important aspects of Victorian life and thought.

Absolutely incredible!
In the early 20th century, Lytton Strachey set the standard for the biography. Prior to his, biographies were often boring lists of accomplishments.

These are clearly the best biographies I have read: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, and General Gordon. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Great Britain; Queens; Biography ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

well documented brings Victoria in a different light
Brings Queen Victoria into a very different light , shows that shes a woman above all , the book touches the love story of the century gone that was her marriage to Albert

An engaging study of a fascinating monarch
Giles Lytton Strachey was an early 20th century writer and biographer who developed a reputation for writing biographies that dealt with individuals as people, rather than the events they were associated with.His 1921 biography of the British monarch, Queen Victoria, is a highly readable insight into this long-reigning queen.

Many public domain books can be slow to read, with language that is sometimes archaic when compared to contemporary writing. This is not the case with Strachey's work.Not only does it thoroughly cover Victoria's life from childhood to death, but it is an engaging read that explores Victoria's relationships, both personal and professional. I particularly liked reading of the love between Victoria and her husband, Albert, much of which is detailed in Victoria's journals and letters. I also enjoyed Strachey's turn of phrase and his ability to create such effective word-pictures of this fascinating monarch and her life.

If you have any interest in history or curiosity about British monarchs I think you will enjoy this book. I certainly did - far more than I expected to.

Pivotal & Engaging
Strachey's book was published orginally in 1921 and was a pivotal biography according to Linda Wagner-Martin in "Telling Women's Lives - The New Biography". This book broke away from tradition and provided a deeper look at the Queen and all those around her by abandoning the notion of promoting a person's successess and strengths and instead paints the portrait of a human with weaknesses, motivations, strengths, and stuggles. The reader sees the Queen in relationships that become history and see the impact of personality in making decisions.

The book is engaging especially once Victoria moves beyond childhood and becomes Queen. The portrait of Edward and Victoria's relationship is vivid. The story provides a rich understanding of places in the lives of the royal family that continue today, namely Balmoral, and give a glimpse at the royal family culture that can be seen in current events. It is more than a book about Queen Victoria.

Enjoy!
... Read more

Product Description
"Eminent Victorians"is a classic by Lytton Strachey 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 till then been regarded as heroes and heroine. They were: Cardinal Henry Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Charles Gordon. "Eminent Victorians" made Strachey's name and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers, where he remains. Lytton Strachey first started "Eminent Victorians" under the title "Victorian Silhouettes," intending to cover the biographies of twelve notable Victorian personalities. Becoming convinced that the Victorian worthies were hypocrites who had bequeathed to his generation the "profoundly evil" system "by which it is sought to settle international disputes by force", Strachey decided to cover only four characters. "Eminent Victorians" was first published in 1818, with almost uniformly enthusiastic reviews. Each of the lives in "Eminent Victorians" are very different, although there are common threads. ... Read more

Product Description
When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved. This language, in spite of the complex influences which went to the making of the nationality of France, was of a simple origin. ... Read more

Product Description
The Stracheys were an exceptionally intelligent and unusual family. Prominent in imperial administration, science, and feminism in the nineteenth century, and in the suffrage movement, women's education, and the bringing of new approaches to sexuality in the twentieth century, they had a wide and significant influence. Examining Lytton Strachey, his parents and nine siblings, Barbara Caine provides a fascinating picture of a diverse and complex family in a period of change from Victorian England to the beat generation. ... Read more

Product Description
2 volume set in slip caseVolume 1 has 475 pages; Volume II has 754 Pages; Volume I copyright: 1967; Volume II Copyright 1968 ... Read more

Product Description
Examine Lytton Strachey’s struggle to create a new homosexual identity and voice through his life and work!

This study of Lytton Strachey, one of the neglected voices of early twentieth-century England, uses his life and work to re-evaluate early British modernism and the relationship between Strachey’s sexual rebellion and literature.

A perfect ancillary textbook for courses in history, literature, and women’s studies, Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity: The Last Eminent Victorian contributes to the expanding field of queer studies from an historian’s perspective. It looks at homosexuality through the eyes of Lytton Strachey as opposed to the too-often analyzed Oscar Wilde and E.M. Forster. Questioning the idea that homosexuality is a “transgressive rebellion,” as Strachey as well as scholars on Bloomsbury have insisted, this volume focuses on the ongoing conflict between Strachey’s Victorian notions of class, gender, and race, and his desire to be modern.

Linking Strachey’s life and work to the larger movement of English modernism, Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity examines:

• Strachey’s role at Cambridge before World War I
• how he created his version of homosexuality out of the Victorian tradition of male romantic friendship
• his relations with the British Empire as he constructed a rich fantasy life that rested on racial and class differences
• his friendships and rivalries with the women of Bloomsbury
• how Strachey’s use of sexuality, androgyny, and history defined (and undermined) his brand of modernism
  
  This thoughtfully indexed, well-referenced volume looks at Strachey’s life, in the words of author Julie Anne Taddeo, “to illustrate some of the issues concerning his generation of Cambridge and Bloomsbury colleagues and how they battled the Victorian ideology, often without success.” It is an essential read for everyone interested in this fascinating chapter in literary (and queer) history.

Customer Reviews (2)

fun read!
This book pulls you in from the beginning. It's not a dry history but a witty and sharp look at the Bloomsbury Group and issues about sex and gender in England. She can be critical of Strachey's misogyny and class elitism while at the same time she makes her readers feel strongly about the plight of the gay man during a repressive era. The book is loaded with fascinating stories about his relationships with Virginia Woolf, Dora Carrington, and John Maynard Keynes. Sodomy, war, complicated love affairs--what more could a reader ask for?!

Wow!A great read!
I had never really known much about Lytton Strachey before reading Taddeo's book.I ordered this on a whim and loved it---I've just ordered Strachey's Eminent Victorians after reading this.

Taddeo writes really well---the book moves quickly and I was fascinated by Taddeo's analysis and discussion of Strachey's sexuality.What I liked most about this book (and I can't say this enough!) was its readability.This is a book for scholars and non-specialists.

If you've read any of the books by the Bloomsbury group or if you love the Victorians, buy this book (actually you should buy it and read it no matter what!). ... Read more

Product Description
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

purple prose(VERY PURPLE)...but a great purple!
this is the story of the "love"/relationship between queen elizabeth the first and robert deveraux,the second earl of essex.lytton strachey has written this as a grand ,sweeping novel,mixing in lots of true life facts with his own way of telling their' story. it makes a great read.it has a sort-of insider/tabloid/talk show-type feel to it-and THIS really happened-to these people! it is a fascinating book.
as i read it,i couldn't help but feel futility because, i knew robert would crash and burn at the end. i wish he had tried to save himself,but,alas..this is tragedy on a grand scale.do not miss this one!

a joy to read
this is a lovely book.The author's mastery of the English language is a pleasure to savor.I will keep this book to re-read and I'm sure I will enjoy his way with words and his way with a story again and again.He makes his characters come to life.If you love Elizabethan history, if you love the English language, read this book, you won't be disappointed.I wish I were articulate enough to do justice to his art.

great writer. period.
once upon a time it seems there was this fella who thought you could actually write creative and lively non-fiction. his name was lytton strachey and he carried his thought out onto paper. all of his books are wonderfully written non-fiction. why oh why do so few non-fiction writers swing for the fence with their writing? is it editors? i know nothing about the inner-workings of the book business. it just puzzles me why almost all non-fiction writing is so uncreative, so unimaginative. lytton strachey, God bless you man! wherever your soul may be.

What a voice!
Strachey is deeply sympathetic of both Elizabeth and Essex, recognizing their strengths and their tragic shortcomings.Most modern biographies of Elizabeth rake her over the coals for her famously dithering and constipated decision-making process, but Stracheymakes a good case for indecision as a political weapon, and cites this quality as part of Elizabeth's genius.The relationship between this hugely complex 70-year old queen and the magnificent but deeply flawed earl is dissected factually and emotionally.An amazing achievement.Jill Masters has a beautiful, silky voice and brings real poignancy to this subtle work. ... Read more

Product Description
Thirty-five sketches, including pieces on Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, Gibbon, Walpole, Boswell, Carlyle, and Sarah Bernhardt, by one of the great biographical writers of this century. Companion volume to Strachey's Literary Essays. Index.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Very nice
Varied short biographies by Lytton Strachey.

Perceptive, generally sympathetic, and beautifully written.

My only complaint, instead of a Xerox of the 1930s edition, it would be nice to have lengthy passages in French translated in footnotes, for ignoramuses like me, who never got around to learning French! ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more