Queen Victorias Secrets

Download or read book Queen Victoria's Secrets written by Adrienne Munich and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unconventional figure in an age that excluded women from government, Victoria was accorded prominence unavailable to any male monarch. Yet as Adrienne Munich argues in this fascinating work, the originality of the solid, dour icon that was Victoria lay, paradoxically, in her very ordinariness. The first book to fully investigate the influence of this icon of British history, Queen Victoria's Secrets demonstrates the firm grasp the queen held on the cultural imagination of her country, exploring how Victoria created and maintained her royal authority. Gracefully weaving together feminist, anthropological, and postcolonial approaches, Munich searches out the myriad, often contradictory incarnations of the queen in the minds of her people. How did Victoria convincingly maintain her power for forty years after Prince Albert's death, never giving up her identity as a grieving widow? How did Victorian society's reverential treatment of their queen conflate with the monarch's plain, middle class public image? These are some of the secrets Munich examines in her richly detailed work. In demonstrating the subtle but powerful ways in which Victoria performed significant cultural work, Queen Victoria's Secrets goes against the grain of Victoria scholarship, which has tended to overlook the queen's political and cultural centrality. This stylish, accessible portrait will be of great interest to those who are fascinated by the myth-making and secrets of the Victorian age.

Download or read book Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter written by Lucinda Hawksley and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secrets of Queen Victoria's sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view. Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother's controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers-especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the "masculine" art of sculpture and go to art college-and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school. The rumors of Louise's colorful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included entanglements with her sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and possibly even her sister Princess Beatrice's handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family, since the sixteenth century, to marry a commoner. She moved with him to Canada when he was appointed Governor-General. Spirited and lively, Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals, and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.

Download or read book The Illustrated Book of Queen Victoria's Secrets written by Various and published by . This book was released on 2001-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compact book explodes with over ninety images of Victorian debauchery, combined with an elegant, but deliciously dirty text by Dr. Christopher Hart that investigates every nook and cranny of the pulsating underbelly of that proud, upstanding era. A truly Dickensian treat!

Download or read book Victoria the Queen written by Julia Woodlands Baird and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The race to the crown -- The birth of "pocket Hercules"--The lonely, naughty princess -- An impossible, strange madness -- "Awful scenes in the house"--Becoming queen: "I shall not fail" -- The coronation: "a dream out of the Arabian nights" -- Learning to rule -- A scandal in the palace -- Virago in love -- The bride: "I never, never spent such an evening" -- Only the husband, not the master -- The palace intruders -- King to all intents: "like a vulture into his prey" -- Perfect, awful, spotless prosperity -- Annus Mirabilis: the revolutionary year -- What Albert did: the Great Exhibition of 1851 -- The Crimea: 'This unsatisfactory war' -- London boils over -- Royal parents: "everything passes so quickly!" -- "Who will call me Victoria now?" -- "The whole house seems like Pompeii." -- Resuscitating the widow at Windsor -- The queen's stallion -- The faery queen awakes -- Enough to kill any man -- Two ironclads colliding: the queen and Mr. Gladstone -- The monarch in a bonnet -- The "poor munshi" -- The diamond empire -- The end of the Victorian Age - "The streets were indeed a strange sight

Download or read book Queen Victoria's Stalker written by Jan Bondeson and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the full story of the Boy Jones, one of the first celerity stalkers in history

Download or read book The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History written by Roland Perry and published by . This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intensely revealing and entertaining account of a great royal secret and hidden love story - an unbuttoned history of Queen Victoria's loves and intrigues.

Download or read book Queen Victoria's Matchmaking written by Deborah Cadbury and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted the most international power and influence: as a matchmaking grandmother. As her reign approached its sixth decade, Queen Victoria's grandchildren numbered over thirty, and to maintain and increase British royal power, she was determined to maneuver them into a series of dynastic marriages with the royal houses of Europe. Yet for all their apparent obedience, her grandchildren often had plans of their own, fueled by strong wills and romantic hearts. Victoria's matchmaking plans were further complicated by the tumultuous international upheavals of the time: revolution and war were in the air, and kings and queens, princes and princesses were vulnerable targets. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Europe from London to Saint Petersburg, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions to enthralling effect. It is at once an intimate portrait of a royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the marriages the Queen arranged. At the heart of it all is Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined Queen Empress the next.