Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold and General Gordon

It is brilliant, delicious, exquisitely civilized. I enjoyed as much as any the Gordon, which alone was quite new to me. -Bertrand Russell (1918)

Eminent Victorians-Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Thomas Arnold and General Gordon (1918) is a collection of short biographies of four leading personalities of the Victorian era by Lytton Strachey. This book would transform the art of biography by taking aim at these heroes of the Victorian age, instead of showing the customary adulation of biographies. Although Strachey’s writing displeased some conventional readers, many considered it brilliant. He opened a new period in biography writing.