Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning; Dr. Arnold; Florence Nightingale; General Gordon (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books, ML 212)

New York: The Modern Library, 1936. Reissue. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 7x5x1. 1936-39 printing of Toledano 212.1, binding/jacket style 7g, orange Rockwell Kent endpapers, $0.95 jacket price, 257 titles on jacket verso. Jacket toned (especially spine), jacket edges rubbed with minimal loss from corners. xi, 342, [5] pp. Eminent Victorians by English writer, biographer, Bloomsbury group member, and literary critic Lytton Strachey, was originally published in 1918. The work consists 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 Gordon (although Nightingale is actually praised and her reputation was enhanced). The book shows its other subjects in a less than flattering light; for instance, the intrigues of Cardinal Manning against Cardinal Newman.