Product Description
Seventh impression of the true first edition - with the title page dated 1918, and with further impressions mentioned on the printer's page as follows: First published - May 9, 1918; Second impression - May, 1918; Third impression - July, 1918; Fourth Impression - August, 1918, Fifth Impression - September, 1918, Sixth impression - October 1918, Seventh impression - December 1918. Illustrated with six monochrome plates (Cardinal Manning; John Henry Newman; Florence Nightingale; Dr. Arnold; General Gordon; Mr. Gladstone) including tissue-guarded photographic frontispiece showing Cardinal Manning. The tissue guard is completely uncreased. ***A very good copy in black cloth-covered boards with red titles on a paper label to the spine. The paper label is slightly chipped and worn with some browning. The boards are clean with light handling marks, and some wear and rubbing to the cloth, mainly at the head of the spine, but also at the edges and corners. The spine is tight and without any reading creases. Internally also very good with a name and date in ink: 'Bridget 1919' at the top of the front free endpaper. None of the usual offsetting to the endpapers. Unusually there is also no foxing even to the prelims. Interior pages clean, without any marks or creases. No dustwrapper. ***228mm x 148mm. 310 pages including contents and preface by the author to the fore, and bibliography at the back of the book - with an additional printed page of 'Some press opinions about "Eminent Victorians"'. ***Contents: Cardinal Manning; Florence Nightingale; Dr. Arnold; The End of General Gordon. ***'"Eminent Victorians" is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), 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 Charles Gordon. While Nightingale is actually praised and her reputation enhanced, the book shows its other subjects in a less-than-flattering light, for instance, the intrigues of Cardinal Manning against Cardinal Newman. The book made Strachey's name and placed him firmly in the top rank of biographers. Strachey developed the idea for "Eminent Victorians" in 1912, when he was living on occasional journalism and writing dilettante plays and verse for his Bloomsbury friends. He went to live in the country at East Ilsley and started work on a book then called "Victorian Silhouettes", containing miniature biographies of a dozen notable Victorian personalities. In Nov 1912, he wrote to Virginia Woolf that their Victorian predecessors "seem to me a set of mouth bungled hypocrites". After his research into the life of Cardinal Manning, he realised he would have difficulty managing twelve lives. In the following year he moved to Wiltshire, where he stayed until 1915, by which...
![[First Edition] EMINENT VICTORIANS: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon (First edition - seventh impression) Lytton](https://r.kelkoo.com/resize.php?country=ca&merchantId=100567270&categoryId=5101&trackingId=96985762&width=auto&height=auto&image=https%3A%2F%2Fpictures.abebooks.com%2Finventory%2F32379410700.jpg&sign=qi4qQmnb659NgCj7ZU91XHMzcs3A5ty2ddOT4gdVAbA-)
