[issybird]

I’m nominating Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey, published in 1921 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial prize.

I was looking for a potted description to crib and this review, posted on Amazon just yesterday, is the best I’ve found:

I cannot praise this biography of Queen Victoria too much. Like all of Strachey's work, it is a gem of English prose style: sometimes mordant, often subtly sarcastic, but always spot on. He does in 100 pages what other biographers seem to fail to do in 1000 pages in capturing the essence of his subject's personality, the zeitgeist of the time in which they lived and so forth. His tongue in cheek description of Prince Albert's marital fidelity (all the while implying that he was gay and just not interested in women to begin with) is typical of Strachey's style and his wit. I say again, a real gem of English prose style and biographical art. A must read for anyone interested in English literature or the Victorian era in general.

And from the Guardian:

Hilarious social commentary… If all biographies were like Stracheys, they would probably kill off the novel altogether.

Available at Manybooks in all formats, free.

I’m also nominating Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell, published in 1933.

From Wikipedia:

Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell (Eric Blair), published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. The first part is an account of living on the breadline in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. The second part is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from the tramp's perspective, with descriptions of the types of hostel accommodation available and some of the characters to be found living on the margins.

From Amazon:

What was a nice Eton boy like Eric Blair doing in scummy slums instead of being upwardly mobile at Oxford or Cambridge? Living Down and Out in Paris and London, repudiating respectable imperialist society, and reinventing himself as George Orwell. His 1933 debut book (ostensibly a novel, but overwhelmingly autobiographical) was rejected by that elitist publisher T.S. Eliot, perhaps because its close-up portrait of lowlife was too pungent for comfort.

On the issue of memoir vs. fiction, Orwell said:

I think I can say that I have exaggerated nothing except in so far as all writers exaggerate by selecting. I did not feel that I had to describe events in the exact order in which they happened, but everything I have described did take place at one time or another.

Orwell is public domain in Canada and Australia and for those fortunates, here’s the link to the download page at Adelaide.

Here’s a synchronicity! When I was checking around for reviews and links for my two nominations, I discovered that Strachey and Orwell share a deathday which is also my birthday (which was the last of the three events ). Is the universe sending me a message?