Lytton Strachey

This is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest monarch, who "was hailed at once as the mother of her people and as the embodied symbol of their imperial greatness." "One of the surpassingly beautiful prose achievements of our time" (Chicago Daily News). Index; illustrations.

One of the most famous and baffling romances in history-between Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex-began in May of 1587, when she was fifty-three and he was just shy of twenty. Their relationship continued until 1601, when the Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason. And, in a succession of brilliant scenes, Strachey portrays the Queen's and the Earl's compelling attraction for on another, their impassioned disagreements, and their mutual contest for power, which led to a final, tragic confrontation. Here we also have superb portraits of influential people of the time: Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil, Walter Raleigh, and other figures of the court who struggled to assert themselves in a kingdom that was primarily defined by her sovereign, and so now seen through history's lens as Elizabethan England.

Few books have had such an impact on their own generation as did Eminent Victorians, which exposed the hypocrisy of the Victorian era by deflating the legends surrounding four of its most notable figures. In the process, Strachey revitalized the art of biography.

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.

"This enchanting volume is not a history of the Victorian age but the portraiture of a woman... Strachey's work is pure art...a narrative as fresh and distinctive as some delicious perfume." -David Muzzey, Political Science Quarterly, (1922) Queen Victoria (1921) is the classic biography of Britain's greatest monarch by Lytton Strachey. Victoria (1819-1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 until her death. In addition, she was Empress of India beginning in 1876. With her reign of 63 years, she gave her name to an era, the Victorian age. This was a period of expansion of the British Empire, and industrial, scientific, political, cultural, and military change. Queen Victoria was awarded the "James Tait Black Memorial Prize," one of Britain's oldest literary awards.

Lytton Strachey is a member of the Bloomsbury Group and its book Eminent Victorians was initially published in 1918 and includes biographies of 4 notable Victorian individuals. Strachey's irreverence as well as wit gained recognition because it had been applied to three men and a woman that were previously viewed as heroes. Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingales, Thomas Arnold as well as General Charles Gordon. Even though Nightingale is praised and her reputation enhanced, it presents some other subject matter in a less than attractive light - for instance, the plots of Cardinal Manning and Cardinal Newman.