Leslie Stephen

Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) was an English critic, historian of ideas, biographer and mountaineer. After teaching at Cambridge he lost his Christian faith, gave up holy orders and became a London man of letters: editor of the Cornhill Magazine and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, to which he contributed hundreds of lives. His History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century and The English Utilitarians are major studies, and his essays include Hours in a Library and The Playground of Europe, drawn from his first ascents in the Alps. He was the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.