SOME OPINIONS ON 'EMINENT VICTORIANS'NOW IN ITS NINTH EDITION
'Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" has had, I suppose, the most instant success that any book of account has won in this generation. Some of Mr. Strachey's incidental portraits are of astonishing brilliancy—notably that of Mr. Gladstone, and the book is sure of long life. This it will owe to its felicity of style and its finish and delicacy of moulding, no less than to its cynical wit and its perfectly serious and critical intention.'—The Nation.
'A brilliant and extraordinarily witty book. Mr. Strachey's method of presenting his characters is both masterly and subtle. His purpose is to penetrate into the most hidden depths of his sitters' characters. There is something almost uncanny in the author's detachment.'—The Times.
'An unusually interesting volume in a department of literature which, in England, has fallen to a grievously low level.'—Manchester Guardian.
'Four short biographies which are certainly equal to anything of the kind which has been produced for a hundred years. He elucidates with consummate dexterity—the book is a masterpiece of its kind.'—Mr. J. C. Squire, inLand and Water.
'A brilliant book has recently appeared which illustrates in very vigorous and striking fashion the interval which seems to divide the twentieth century from the nineteenth. Mr. Lytton Strachey's book has attained a celebrity quite remarkable for literary work produced in times of war. There is no doubt as to its literary merits.'—Leading Article inThe Daily Telegraph.
'This book is brilliant and witty and iconoclastic enough, but it has also something in it which gives it greatness. Regarded as an example of the manner in which biography can be written, it is almost unparalleled in English; and many readers will be rejoiced if Mr. Strachey can be induced to become a Plutarch of the modern world.'—Westminster Gazette.
'It is impossible here even to outline the precise, vivid, and witty essays which Mr. Strachey has devoted to his four characters. But he has certainly done something to redeem English biography from the reproach under which it suffers when compared with the art as practised in France; and he comes close to the standard which he sets himself when he speaks of the "Fontenelles and Condorcets."'—New Statesman.
'Mr. Strachey's subtle and suggestive art.'—Mr. Asquith's Romanes Lecture at Oxford.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS