Eminent Victorians

“Discretion is not the better part of biography,” Lytton warns us, and it is with this motto that he paints his portraits of Cardinal Manning, Dr. Arnold, Florence Nightingale, and General Gordon. The caricatures – which represent the world of religion, philanthropy, education, and politics – expose the high Victorian myths, and reveal a slightly darker truth about the leading figures of the era.Some say that he led the world into the next generation, but that claim is essentially over inflated. What can be said is that the line between fiction and non-fiction was blurred. A new genre was born: literary biography.