The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen

by Frederic William Maitland, Virginia Woolf, Leslie Stephen

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), the founding Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, was one of the leading literary figures of the nineteenth century. Stephen, the father of artist Vanessa Bell and writer Virginia Woolf, began his career writing for London publications before being appointed Editor of The Cornhill Magazine in 1881. The magazine's proprietor approached him with the idea for the Dictionary, and the first volume appeared in 1885 to much acclaim – but by 1889 Stephen had collapsed from overwork and finally stepped down from his editorial role in 1891. However, he continued to write extensively not least, publishing the three-volume The English Utilitarians (also reissued in this series) in 1900. This biography, published in 1906, was written by family friend and legal historian Frederic Maitland (1850–1906), who drew extensively from Stephen's letters to give a detailed account of the life of a most influential Victorian.

534 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1906

About the author

Frederic William Maitland, FBA was an English historian and lawyer who is generally regarded as the modern father of English legal history.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I read was the original, published in 1906; I saw it at an antiques show and, knowing who Stephen was, I grabbed it. Apparently I was the first person to read it all the way through, as some pages in quires needed cutting to see what continued on from the page I had just read.
Stephen was the father of Virginia and Vanessa who became well known as a writer and artist. Stephen had an interesting life: journalist; critic; un-collared cleric; and editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Stephen was also a keen mountaineer in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Naturally, he was an inveterate letter writer, as, well, everyone had to be. Not much about his kids, though brother Thoby is mentioned several times. It was the letters which caused me to take so long to read the book: I pursued distractions in the form of narrative history and science fiction. My biggest mistake was looking up one thing, one thing in the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, and I was deep in for hours over several days. But I always returned to this memoir of Stephen, written by a close friend.