"Eminent Victorians" looks at the Catholic leader Cardinal Manning, the author and nurse Florence Nightingale, the Catholic reformer Thomas Arnold, and the British Army officer Charles George Gordon. The book was a popular and commercial success, establishing Strachey's writing career. His inventive form of biography was not greeted with total acclaim. Many found his treatment of his subjects to be offensive and unduly critical. His attribution of a realist psychology to his characters left many unnerved. Yet it is this tone that gives the work its texture and energy-a truly artistic work of biography from one of England's most modern minds.
