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Article: Official lives: Lytton Strachey, the Queen's cabinet and the eminence of aesthetics.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Nineteenth-Century Prose
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Nineteenth-Century Prose. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the autumn of 1912, Lytton Strachey brooded over his plan for a series of concise, artistic biographical portraits of a dozen eminent Victorians. Some were to be admired, others ridiculed. As he read their self-assured letters, however, his rebellious spirit asserted itself. Though he recognized a certain "baroque charm" in their old-fashioned ways, he settled instead for a single-minded exposition of their pretensions, and in so doing fashioned the framework for what remains the most potent critique of Victorian biography, Eminent Victorians. (1)
By 1914, the tone and many of the characteristic phrases of abuse which would be published four years later were ...