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Summary
Summary
The true story for fans of the PBS Masterpiece series Victoria, this page-turning biography reveals the real woman behind the myth: a bold, glamorous, unbreakable queen--a Victoria for our times. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this stunning portrait is a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
THE NEW YORK TIMES * ESQUIRE * THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY
" Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch."-- The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would threaten many of Europe's monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public's expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger tracts of the globe. In a world where women were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand.
Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother's meddling and an adviser's bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping conventional boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security--queen of a quarter of the world's population at the height of the British Empire's reach.
Drawing on sources that include fresh revelations about Victoria's relationship with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to life the fascinating story of a woman who struggled with so many of the things we do today: balancing work and family, raising children, navigating marital strife, losing parents, combating anxiety and self-doubt, finding an identity, searching for meaning.
Author Notes
Julia Baird is a journalist, broadcaster, and author based in Sydney, Australia. She is a columnist for the International New York Times and host of The Drum on ABC TV (Australia). Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Monthly, and Harper's Bazaar . She has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Sydney. In 2005, Baird was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Baird dedicates this florid, heaving biography of Queen Victoria to undoing the myths that continue to surround the woman whose era bears her name-specifically, that she was eclipsed by her husband, Albert, in matters of state; was incapable of loving her children; and was an absentee monarch after Albert's untimely death. Instead, Victoria emerges in Baird's fluid prose as a figure to be reckoned with in her own right, a passionate wife as well as an unbending ruler who defied no fewer than seven assassination attempts. Victoria's rich personal life makes for interesting reading, but Baird's attempts to trace the beginnings of the suffrage and anti-slavery movements to the values embodied in Victoria's reign are unconvincing, grafted as they are onto a mass of details about white dresses "edged with swansdown" and the Prince of Wales's sordid love life. Baird's empathy for her subject is apparent throughout, however, and when Victoria finally exits the stage at age 81, the narrative seems to exhale, drained. Royal biographies tend to be breathless and straitened at the same time, and Baird's contribution is no exception, but she imbues the chilly figure of Victoria with welcome humor and warmth. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Given the many books about Queen Victoria, one wonders if is there more to say, but Baird writes with such spirit and well-founded authority that readers will feel as though the story of the famous British queen is being told for the first time. The second but no-less-important impression Baird leaves readers with is the sense that she has great appreciation for the queen's husband, Prince Albert, and his very important and self-created role in British political and public life. Baird also clarifies issues that have habitually clouded an accurate accounting of the queen's character and reign, beginning with the idea, an incorrect one, as it turns out, that Victoria pretty much retreated from life when the prince consort died. The truth as Baird establishes it is that, for the 39 years left to her, Victoria continued to exhibit the great strength of character that first revealed itself when she was a little girl whose chance of inheriting the throne appeared slim. Baird does not turn a blind eye on Victoria's darker sides, including her willfulness, selfishness, and self-pity. But that simply adds dimensions to a significant character.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
QUEEN VICTORIA was the first British monarch to be photographed. But it's not the early images of a young woman that we remember. It's the figure of a long-reigning matriarch in profile, small and heavy, that lives in the collective imagination. Because of the length of the exposure, subjects found it difficult to hold a smile for the camera - but, in any case, we assume this queen would not be quick to smile. We would be wrong. Queen Victoria wasn't tipped to rule. Accident and tragedy put her on the throne soon after her 18th birthday. Christened Alexandrina Victoria, this woman who lent her name to the age would, as Mark Twain once put it, "see more things invented than any other monarch that ever lived." While the era is known for great leaps in innovation and industrialization, it's equally famed for its spirit of repression - social, sexual, emotional - and Queen Victoria was its standard-bearer. But surprisingly, Victoria was not a Victorian. Now a new queen is emerging. A biography and a novel, paired with a forthcoming television series, will sift through the standard lore, seeking the unexplored life of this iconic woman. Factual and fictional investigations of a historical figure can lead a reader through varied trajectories, yet still arrive in a similar emotional landscape. It's a tricky thing to translate a human life, with all its unknowable quirks and happenings, to pull a narrative are from the scattered chronology of events. Biography presents itself as fact, but without occasional forays into dramatic scene-setting it may not hold together. These small imagined moments are the movable joints that make it whole. For me, biographical history must be animate in order to succeed, and for that it must have the propulsive power of storytelling, as well as the kind of affinity that gives a writer authority over her subject. With fiction, success often depends on immersion. As a reader of novels, I want to be helicoptered into a period and move right in. If the author's historical research becomes obtrusive, the illusion cracks. "Victoria the Queen," Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch. Right out of the gate, the book thrums with authority as Baird builds her portrayal of Victoria. Overturning stereotypes, she rips this queen down to the studs and creates her anew. Yes, there are the familiar biographical landmarks, the wild love for Prince Albert and the bottomless grief at his early death, but Baird's Victoria isn't the woman we expect to meet. Her queen is a pure iconoclast: emotional, demonstrative, sexual and driven. She is a woman who leaps off her throne to embrace her elderly uncle during her coronation, who loves to dance, is fervently opposed to animal cruelty, survives eight assassination attempts and weeps loudly in public. She is also a woman who shocks her doctors with her candid approach to pregnancy and does nothing to hide her frank sexual appetite. When, after her ninth child is born, the royal physicians advise that, at almost 38, "this should be her last baby," her first question is "Can I have no more fun in bed?" This is not the prudish queen of the history books. It's commonly thought that after Prince Albert died, Victoria sank into her grief and retired from public life, essentially abdicating her responsibilities. Baird offers us a paradox: a queen who uses the stereotypes of her sex to her advantage and, while claiming nervous weakness, withdraws from public view even as she ruthlessly micromanages her political cabinet, often sending her ministers hourly instructions. Baird follows this trajectory of power, tracing its swing from Victoria to Albert and back again. Power provides the vertebrae of the biography. After she marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the queen's authority begins to erode. Baird's Albert is a loyal husband and diligent public servant but also a misogynist. He has excellent political instincts, yet he believes that rulership is a male prerogative. Over the course of their 21-year marriage, Albert dismantles his wife's confidence in her own intellect, sensibilities and judgment. It is a marriage that begins with a radical role reversal. Victoria proposes, offers Albert a ring and keeps her maiden name, but as their union proceeds, Albert becomes firmly ensconced in the world of government while Victoria is tethered to the domestic realm, pregnant for a total of 80 months. Baird's Victoria has "forgotten her own colossal strength." It's only after Albert dies and her grief begins to subside that she rediscovers her political will. Baird writes in the round. She constructs a dynamic historical figure, then spins out a spherical world of elegant reference, anchoring the narrative in specific detail and pinning down complex swaths of history that, in less capable hands, would simply blow away. At points, she also pulls back, effectively locating her subject within a broader context. And so, on the day Victoria discovers she is next in line for the throne, Baird offers snapshots of other future pillars of the Victorian world. We see 10-year-old George Eliot at boarding school, 18-yearold Charles Dickens learning shorthand in the reading room of the British Museum and 20-year-old Alfred, Lord Tennyson "unhappily studying at Cambridge ." Baird's central figures are sculpted from finely grained raw material, enhanced with the kind of detail that lends them nuance and dimension. Once we know that Victoria kicked off the trend for white wedding dresses; popularized the use of chloroform during childbirth (disregarding the established belief that its pain was the payback for original sin); wrote a yearly personal letter to Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man"; and placed a "sultry" portrait of herself inside her husband's coffin, she takes on a specificity of character that brings a warm immediacy to the historical narrative. IN "VICTORIA," Daisy Goodwin's lively and effervescent novel, the range of her storytelling i s rich but brief. Here we meet a green young queen who has spent her childhood shut up in a moldy palace with an overprotective mother and her mother's adviser, the bullish, ambitious Sir John Conroy. Not permitted to sleep in a room or tackle a flight of stairs alone, Victoria is hungry for independence. The day she ascends the throne, she gains her freedom, and over the next two years she carefully polices the borders of her authority. She is young, motivated primarily by love and instinct. Perhaps inevitably, Victoria compromises her position, but then rallies. In depicting this process, Goodwin uses her well-judged departures from the strict historical chronology to arrive at an emotional core quite similar to Baird's. The young Victoria is the worker as well as the queen bee, yet still "the sort of woman who flowered in male company." Goodwin's queen has all the makings of a captivating human paradox. Although the novel ends before her marriage, Goodwin cleverly lays the groundwork for Victoria's future. Her repaired relationship with her mother and the dynamics of power within her marriage are all seeded here. Queen Victoria's historical image was carefully curated by those closest to her. In what Baird calls "one of the greatest acts of censorship in history," Victoria's daughter Beatrice transcribed her mother's journals and edited out everything that seemed to reflect poorly on her, then burned the originals. Even now, the keepers of the Royal Archives would prefer that the physical details of Victoria's death not be published. That the queen lived with a painful prolapsed uterus for decades is a secret that was meticulously concealed. In a similar fashion, her family tried to erase all evidence that she cared deeply for any of the men in her life other than her adored Prince Albert, from Lord Melbourne to her Highland servant John Brown. Victoria's sanitized, puritanical mythology was a creative act of fiction intended to illuminate the woman those around her wanted her to be. In their own ways, Baird and Goodwin are seeking the woman she actually was. ? priya parmar'S most recent novel is "Vanessa and Her Sister."
Kirkus Review
Australian journalist and historian Baird (Media Tarts: Female Politicians and the Press, 2004) draws on previously unpublished sources to fashion a lively, perceptive portrait of the long-reigning queen.Victoria (1819-1901), writes the author, was an adoring wife, overbearing mother, and a clever and forceful political calculator. Characterizing her subject as the most famous working mother in the world, Baird focuses intently on love, sex, and family: Victorias marriage to Albert and protracted mourning after he died; her attitudes toward childbearing and mothering her extensive brood; her postpartum depressions; her adoration of the blunt, bearded Scotsman John Brown; and her relationships with many men in her government. Although there are few surprises for readers familiar with previous biographies by A.N. Wilson, Christopher Hibbert, Matthew Dennison, and Carrolly Erickson, to name a few, Baird shrewdly assesses the quality of the queens family life and creates sharply drawn portraits of the major players in her circle. The queen budded in the presence of a man who charmed her, who confided in her and sought her approval, such as her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, with whom she had one of the great platonic romances of modern history, and the sympathetic, witty Benjamin Disraeli. As for her marriage, Baird sees both Victoria and Albert as stubborn and strong-willed. Albert was aiming for greatness, the author observes, and was happy when his wife was pregnant so he could take a role in governing. He believed women were inferior to men, and Victoria conceded, Alberts talents were superior. As far as motherhood, Baird reveals that Victoria hated being pregnant, feared that she would die in childbirth, was sometimes doting, but also described her children bluntly and often harshly and clearly had her favorites. On the political landscape, Victoria witnessed the devastating Crimean War, uprisings across Europe, famine in Ireland, and domestic social pressures. She sought to transcend a primarily ceremonial and symbolic role to one of power and influence. A well-researched biography sensitive to Queen Victoria as a woman. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
With this work, Australia-based journalist Baird (Media Tarts) covers the life and times of the longest reigning UK monarch prior to Queen Elizabeth II. This book guides readers through the ups and downs of Queen Victoria's life (1819-1901), including her melancholy childhood, unlikely ascent to the throne, and the supreme amount of losses she experienced during her 63-year reign. Baird convincingly reframes the public perception of Victoria as a mother, along with providing unprecedented insight into her relationships following Prince Albert's death in 1861. The book features an extensive notes section and a bibliography of the primary and secondary sources the author used from her research. While readers will come across multiple hefty biographies on Queen Victoria, such as A.N. Wilson's Victoria: A Life, Baird crafts a comprehensive study of the monarch and others with whom she was involved in an engaging, smoothly rendered narrative. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in British history and the integral figures that shaped it, as well as readers looking for an excellent biography. [See Prepub Alert, 5/23/16.]-Katie McGaha, County of Los Angeles P.L. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.