The Enigma of Leslie Stephen’s Reputation

Abstract

Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) is remembered as the most eminent late-Victorian man of English letters, father of Virginia Woolf, forerunner of the Bloomsbury group, and, most notably, founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Yet his work at the Dictionary occupied only seven years of his life, was stressful to him both physically and mentally, and all but killed him. He was unsuited to the work and detested it, yet it made his reputation. Being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, and obtaining the silent backing of one element of Victorian private enterprise made Stephen the man remembered more than a century later. The moment of the DNB was the high point of Victorian nationalism, and Stephen was fortunate to be associated with it. The long view is that his DNB editorship was an enormous success: day-to-day detail tells a different story.