Eminent Victorians

I’ve read thus far in this term several auto/biographies/memoirs from the Victorian period, Edmund Gosse, Robert Graves, Strachey, Eminent Victorians: Florence Nightingale, Oliphant, Autobiography. Ed. Elizabeth Jay, and Virgina Woolf, The Art of Biography, Sketch of the Past. Its strikes me as curious how all more or less come from the same middle class background and how much importance they attach to their acquaintances. Its filled with what we nowadays call name dropping. Their relations with the upper echelons seem to make them who they are regardless of their chores in life, they belong to one and the same inner-circle. The name they bare sets them aside from blokes, say, like me. Therein lies the difference, as far as I can see between Brits and Americans, while I haven’t read any memorable autobiographies, biographies or memoirs of Americans I know the value system in the States are different, because I know that what is valued in the US is the ability to exceed above your deficiencies, society will reward this. About the only thing worst frowned upon in America is the Nouveau Richie. This class is seriously out in a limb there but they seem to love a story of the poor farmer who made it to the top.