Leslie Stephen

At the time of his death, Leslie Stephen (b. 1832–d. 1904) was arguably the most eminent English Victorian man of letters. He wrote more than 60 books and hundreds of essays and reviews on history, literature, ethics, mountaineering, politics, university life, social movements, agnosticism, and utilitarianism. In less than ten years as founding editor and contributor at the Dictionary of National Biography, he created what was then recognized as the model on which biography was written for decades. Respected by his peers, honored by universities, and created Knight Commander of the Bath, his life and work seemed remarkable. He had begun his writing life at a time when an educated gentleman with university, London clubland, political, and family connections had entry into writing for the magazines and newspapers with which mid-Victorian England teemed. Stephen was in a privileged position for an easy passage into the London literary scene as he left his clerical and academic life at Cambridge. His father, Sir James Stephen, had been an eminent politician, cabinet minister, and academic as well as a leading figure in the anti-slavery movement. His brother, James Fitzjames Stephen, was already a prolific political and legal journalist and essayist and became a leading jurist. He introduced Leslie Stephen to publishers and editors, who immediately employed him. With the encouragement of the publisher George Smith, he met and married Thackeray’s younger daughter, and he joined the Athenaeum Club. He was sought after as a writer and editor, and he was almost immediately financially secure. Though no more than an amateur at the start of his career, in the 1860s he quickly established himself as a journalist, editor, philosopher, political commentator, literary critic, and lecturer. The DNB, which he edited 1882–1891, confirmed his eminence and secured his place in literary history. Yet he died isolated and unhappy, doubting the value of his work, convinced he would be derided if not forgotten by future generations. In many ways he was right. In 1904 glowing obituaries were written, but most of his books were already out of print. Even the term “man of letters” belonged to another age as academic critics and learned journals replaced the amateurs, hacks, and popular monthly magazine essays of Stephen’s heyday. He might have remained in obscurity but for the literary phenomenon of his daughter, Virginia Woolf. When her work and life became beacons of late-20th-century feminism, Leslie Stephen’s name was resurrected though his reputation fell into tatters. Her published diaries, letters, and autobiographical essays bitterly criticized him, and the new feminist critics often blamed him for the miseries in her life. Yet he is today again accorded respect for his Victorian reputation thanks to the work of late-20th-century academic study of what he wrote and what he achieved, notwithstanding his personal shortcomings.