Two Victorian families

Betty Askwith

The large upper middle-class family was one of the most characteristic institutions of the Victorian era, and one that has almost entirely vanished. In her book Askwith recreates the life of two such families, those of Sir Richard Strachey and Archibishop Benson. The Stracheys and Bensons moved in very different worlds, the former in intellectual and the latter in royal and aristocratic cicrles, but they shared certain strong characteristics, notably that of the enormous self-confidence of the mid-Victorian age. And both families produced a younger generation teeming with writers.