Strachey was incubating the idea of writing a series of portraits of Victorian writers and worthies – the germ of ‘Eminent Victorians’.
To Virginia Woolf, November 8, 1912
Is it prejudice, do you think, that makes us hate the Victorians, or is it the truth of the case? They seem to me to be a set of mouthing bungling hypocrites; but perhaps really there is a baroque charm about them which will be discovered by our great-great-grandchildren as we have discovered the charm of Donne, who seemed intolerable to the 18th century. Only I don’t believe it… I should like to live for another 200 years (to be moderate).