Himmelfarb, Gertrude. "Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians." New Criterion, November, 1983.

Excerpt :

When Lytton Strachey was asked to propose a toast to his Eminent Victorians, he quoted an eminent Victorian biographer: “When I hear men called ‘judicious’ I suspect them; but when I hear them called ‘judicious and venerable,’ I know they are scoundrels.” Strachey amended this to describe his own credo: “When I hear people called ‘Victorians,’ I suspect them. But when I hear them called ‘eminent Victorians,’ I write their lives.”

 

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