The Life and Letters of 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.