I found this paragraph recently in a book about the 1920s. Cpr may find it of interest.

"They [the intellectuals] took a particular pleasure in overturning the idols of the majority; hence the vogue among them of the practice for which W. E. Woodward, in a novel published in 1923, invented the word 'debunking.' Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria, which had been a best seller in the United States in 1922, was followed by a deluge of debunking biographies. Robert Hughes removed a few coats of whitewash from George Washington and nearly caused a riot when he declared in a speech that 'Washington was a great card-player, a distiller of whiskey, and a champion curser, and he danced for three hours without stopping with the wife of his principal general.' Other American worthies were portrayed in all their erring humanity, and the notorious rascals of history were rediscovered as picturesque and glamorous fellows; until for a time it was almost taken for granted that a biographer, if he were to be successful, must turn conventional white into black and vice versa."

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001

Answers

Item #6

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/Allen/ch9.html

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2001