Book Guide to Queen Victoria

Although Queen Victoria is known as quite a sombre, dour widow, her early life has recently come into focus again. She was a fascinating monarch, and for a Canadian, she is rather everywhere. For anyone who doesn’t know, Victoria Day is the Monday prior to May 25th and is a public holiday (huzzah for long weekends!). It’s also the day that Canada officially celebrates the Sovereign’s birthday. (Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!) Although an era was named after her, I don’t know that most people actually know that much of her. In honour of the monarchy and Queen Victoria, I’ve decided to share some of my favourite books about Victoria herself- she was a compelling monarch and she makes for a very interesting read! This is your book guide to Queen Victoria and her fascinating life.

You can see marks of Victoria all over the place, if you are looking. Victoria and Albert are almost on every corner in London- the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Victoria Memorial outside of Buck House, Albert Hall, the list goes on. And then once you broaden your scope to the Commonwealth, she is literally everywhere. However, what is the story behind this woman that dominates our landmarks still?

Becoming Queen Victoria, Kate Williams

In her lauded biography’ England’s Mistress’, Kate Williams painted a vivid and intimate portrait of Emma Hamilton, the lover of English national hero Lord Horatio Nelson. Now, with the same keen insight and gift for telling detail, Williams provides a gripping account of Queen Victoria’s rise to the throne and her early years in power—as well as the tragic, little-known story of the princess whose demise made it all possible.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, monarchies across Europe found themselves in crisis. With mad King George III and his delinquent offspring tarnishing the realm, the English pinned their hopes on the only legitimate heir to the throne: the lovely and prudent Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince of Wales and granddaughter of the king. Sadly, those dreams faded when, at age twenty-one, she died after a complicated pregnancy and stillbirth. While a nation grieved, Charlotte’s power-hungry uncles plotted quickly to produce a new heir. Only the Duke of Kent proved successful in his endeavor, with the birth of a girl named Victoria.

Writing with a combination of novelistic flair and historical precision, Williams reveals an energetic and vibrant woman in the prime of her life, while chronicling the byzantine machinations behind Victoria’s struggle to occupy the throne—scheming that continued even after the crown was placed on her head.

Upon hearing of the death of her predecessor, King William IV, Victoria—in her bold first act as queen—banished her overambitious mother from the room, a simple yet resolute move that would set the tone for her reign. The queen clashed constantly not only with her mother and her mother’s adviser, the Irish adventurer John Conroy, but with her ministers and even her beloved Prince Albert, all of whom, in one way or another, attempted to seize control from her.

By connecting Charlotte’s sad fate to Victoria’s majestic rule, Kate Williams lays bare the passions that swirled around the throne—the court secrets, the sexual repression, and the endless intrigue. The result is a grand and satisfying tale of a woman whose destiny began long before she was born and whose legacy lives on.

I think that I will always have found memories of this book, I read it on the train to and from York on my 2015 trip. There’s something about reading history while passing through the places where it happened… Williams’ book starts with Victoria’s aunt, Princess Charlotte, who should have been Queen- I find Charlotte to be a fascinating figure that is often forgotten, odd given how much of an impact she had on Victoria. Williams traces the effect that Charlotte’s life and death had on Victoria, and how it shaped much of her early reign and choices. This is a fairly fast read, and Williams has an easy to read style, perfect for an afternoon at home!

Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household, Kate Hubbard

A sparkling, vivid portrait of Queen Victoria and her court, viewed from the perspective of those closet to her every day: her household staff.

“Your first duty is to God; your second to your Sovereign; your third to yourself.”

During her sixty-three year reign, Queen Victoria gathered around her a household dedicated to her service. For some, royal employment was the defining experience of their lives; for others it came as an unwelcome duty, or a prelude to greater things. Serving Victoria follows the lives of six members of her household, from the governess to the royal children, and her maid-of-honor to her chaplain and personal physician.

Drawing on their letters and diaries – many hitherto unpublished – Serving Victoria offers a unique insight into the Victorian court, with all its frustrations and absurdities, as well as the Queen herself, sitting squarely at its center. Seen through the eyes of her household as she traveled between Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, and to the French and Belgian courts, Victoria emerges as more vulnerable, more emotional, more selfish, more comical than the austere figure depicted in her famous portraits. We see a woman who was prone to fits of giggles, who wept easily and often, who gobbled her food and shrank from confrontation but insisted on controlling the lives of those around her. We witness her extraordinary and debilitating grief at the death of her husband Albert, and her sympathy towards the tragedies that afflicted her household.

Witty, astute and moving, Serving Victoria is a perfect foil to the pomp and circumstance – and prudery and conservatism – associated with Victoria’s reign, and gives an unforgettable glimpse of what it meant to serve the Queen.

If you have any inkling of knowledge of the Victorian period, you probably think of buttoned up ladies, top-hatted gentleman, and a rigid structure in society. Well, Kate Hubbard’s book will give you insight into just what those who worked for and with Victoria on a daily basis went through. (If you are thinking she was a boss who let you work from home when you wanted and had google nap pods, I hate to be the bearer of bad news….) Victoria kept volumes and volumes of diaries that give us immeasurable details into her life, but we have far less information on those who served her. This is a insightful look into their lives!
Victoria’s Daughters, Jerrold M Packard

Vicky, Alice, Helena, and Beatrice were historically unique sisters, born to a sovereign who ruled over a quarter of the earth’s people and who gave her name to an era: Queen Victoria. Two of these princesses would themselves produce children of immense consequence. All five would curiously come to share many of the social restrictions and familial machinations borne by nineteenth-century women of less-exulted class.

Victoria and Albert’s precocious firstborn child, Vicky, wed a Prussian prince in a political match her high-minded father hoped would bring about a more liberal Anglo-German order. That vision met with disaster when Vicky’s son Wilhelm– to be known as Kaiser Wilhelm– turned against both England and his mother, keeping her out of the public eye for the rest of her life. Gentle, quiet Alice had a happier marriage, one that produced Alexandra, later to become Tsarina of Russia, and yet another Victoria, whose union with a Battenberg prince was to found the present Mountbatten clan. However, she suffered from melancholia and died at age thirty-five of what appears to have been a deliberate, grief-fueled exposure to the diphtheria germs that had carried away her youngest daughter. Middle child Helena struggled against obesity and drug addition but was to have lasting effect as Albert’s literary executor. By contrast, her glittering and at times scandalous sister Louise, the most beautiful of the five siblings, escaped the claustrophobic stodginess of the European royal courts by marrying a handsome Scottish commoner, who became governor general of Canada, and eventually settled into artistic salon life as a respected sculptor. And as the baby of the royal brood of nine, rebelling only briefly to forge a short-lived marriage, Beatrice lived under the thumb of her mother as a kind of personal secretary until the queen’s death.

Principally researched at the houses and palaces of its five subjects in London, Scotland, Berlin, Darmstadt, and Ottawa– and entertainingly written by an experienced biographer whose last book concerned Victoria’s final days– Victoria’s Daughtersclosely examines a generation of royal women who were dominated by their mother, married off as much for political advantage as for love, and finally passed over entirely with the accession of their n0 brother Bertie to the throne. Packard provides valuable insights into their complex, oft-tragic lives as daughters of their time.

This was actually the first book I read about Victoria specifically, and it’s a longer read but so very interesting! Victoria is known for being the grandmother of most European aristocracy- her children, particularly her daughters, are how that happened. Five of her nine surviving children were women and although they had similar childhoods, they took very different paths in adulthood. Vicki, Alice, Helena, Louise, and Beatrice are interesting women in their own right (and I can recommend quite a few biographies for the sisters), and this is a wonderful examination of their relationship with a very complicated mother.

If you are interested in learning more about her childhood home, Kensington Palace, check out my guide here!

And if you want to see some of Victoria’s gorgeous tiaras from the Victoria Revealed exhibition, head here!

Image via PBS

Bonus: Victoria, ITV/PBS
If you aren’t in the mood to read, I can’t recommend Victoria enough. It is a beautifully shot mini series, with Jenna Coleman taking the lead as Victoria. This series covers the beginning of her reign to her first pregnancy, and while being fictional is still worth a watch!

What are your impressions of Queen Victoria? And what books would you include in a book guide to Queen Victoria

Cheers,
The Historian
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