Longford, Elizabeth. Queen Victoria. Harper & Row, 1965.
Reason read: Queen Victoria celebrated a birth in May. Read in her honor.
Using private papers, journals, and letters, Elizabeth Longford has written thorough biographies of Queen Victoria several times over. Queen Victoria is more concise and compact than Longford’s other books on the subject of Victoria. If you are looking for a shorter version than Strachey or Hibbert, this is it. Longford touches on all the points: born Alexandrina Victoria in 1819, Victoria went on to have a long and thrilling life. She ascended the throne at eighteen, proposed to her beloved Albert a year later, had nine children, and went on to rule Britain, India, and Ireland. After the death of Albert, widow Victoria went into seclusion for eleven years. Twenty-nine years later, she dies. Backfill with the politics of the time (Disraeli, Bonaparte, Crimea, Prussia, and the Year of Revolutions), and Queen Victoria is a good representation of England from 1819 to 1901.
As an aside, I never thought about having someone wear a sprig of holly pinned to the neck of their dress in order to force one to keep her chin up.
Author fact: Elizabeth Longford has a literary prize named after her.
Book trivia: Do not confuse Queen Victoria with Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (published one year apart).
Lines I loved, “…she would have married him anyhow, whatever the consequences” (p 139). Confessional: I would like to adopt Queen Victoria’s phrase, “We are not amused” (p 64).
Music: “God Save the King”, “The Wolf”, and Haydn’s “Funeral March”.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Queen Victoria and Her Times” (p 191).
~*LunaSea*~ 