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Summary
Summary
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"Victoria is an absolutely captivating novel of youth, love, and the often painful transition from immaturity to adulthood. Daisy Goodwin breathes new life into Victoria's story, and does so with sensitivity, verve, and wit."
- AMANDA FOREMAN
Drawing on Queen Victoria's diaries, which she first started reading when she was a student at Cambridge University, Daisy Goodwin--creator and writer of the new PBS Masterpiece drama Victoria and author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter-- brings the young nineteenth-century monarch, who would go on to reign for 63 years, richly to life in this magnificent novel.
Early one morning, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman, who stands less than five feet tall, can rule the greatest nation in the world.
Despite her age, however, the young queen is no puppet. She has very definite ideas about the kind of queen she wants to be, and the first thing is to choose her name.
"I do not like the name Alexandrina," she proclaims. "From now on I wish to be known only by my second name, Victoria."
Next, people say she must choose a husband. Everyone keeps telling her she's destined to marry her first cousin, Prince Albert, but Victoria found him dull and priggish when they met three years ago. She is quite happy being queen with the help of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who may be old enough to be her father but is the first person to take her seriously.
On June 19th, 1837, she was a teenager. On June 20th, 1837, she was a queen. Daisy Goodwin's impeccably researched and vividly imagined new book brings readers Queen Victoria as they have never seen her before.
Author Notes
Daisy Georgia Goodwin was born on December 19, 1961. She is a British television producer, novelist and poet. After attending Westminster School and Queen's College, London Goodwin studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge and attended Columbia Film School before joining the BBC as a trainee arts producer in 1985. In 1998, she moved to Talkback Productions, and in 2005, founded Silver River Productions. Her first novel, My Last Duchess, was published in the UK in August 2010 and, under the title The American Heiress, in the U.S. and Canada in June 2011. She has also published eight poetry anthologies and a memoir entitled Silver River, and was chairman of the judging panel for the 2010 Orange Prize for women's fiction.
In 2014 her title, The Fortune Hunter made The New York Times Best Seller List. Her titles include The Fortune Hunter, My Last Duchess, Bringing Up Baby: The New Mother's Companion and Poems to Last a Lifetime. Television shows that she has worked on include How Clean is Your House, House Doctor, Grand Designs, Your Money or Your Life and Property Ladder.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Inspired by the diaries of Queen Victoria, British TV producer and author Goodwin (The American Heiress) mines a rich vein of royal history with the ascension of the impetuous and imperious 18-year-old-whose sole companions were dolls and a lapdog-to the English throne in 1837. "Your subjects are not dolls to be played with. To be a queen, you have to be more than a little girl with a crown," scolds a dying lady of the court whom Victoria has cruelly shamed. It is a heartbreaking lesson as the new monarch navigates the palace and political intrigues under the guidance of her charming and lovelorn prime minister, Lord Melbourne. It's this relationship between the impressionable teen and her attentive middle-aged adviser that forms the irresistible emotional center of Goodwin's rich and passionate historical novel. "When you give your heart it will be without hesitation... but you cannot give it to me," Melbourne tells Victoria after she confesses that her prime minister is "the only companion I could ever desire." Rejected, Victoria begins the stormy and politically fraught courtship with her German cousin and future husband, Albert. That true-life ending, however, pales in comparison to Goodwin's timeless recounting of a young girl's aching first love. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
It has become popular to contextualize certain monarchs not in toto as they ended up (dour or corpulent or tyrannical or pathetic) but in the prime of their youth. Henry VIII has received this treatment, and Queen Victoria now seems to be the sovereign du jour. Goodwin's (The Fortune Hunter, 2014) novel of the young queen, painted here as a guileless romantic heroine, covers her accession and her marriage proposal to Prince Albert, a latecomer who forms a romantic triangle with Victoria and the prime minister, Lord Melbourne. Typical for royal fiction, the drama comes from the machinations of factious, self-serving courtiers and politicians attempting to control or destroy the monarch, in this case a sheltered, immature young woman fumbling toward effective queenship. The sympathetic, older, and rather tragic Melbourne guides her and alleviates her loneliness, and the relationship between the two underpins the novel. Goodwin wrote this simultaneously with the screenplay for Masterpiece Theatre's Victoria, slated to air in early 2017. Highly recommended for historical-fiction collections. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Goodwin always draws in fans, but expect extra buzz and lots of promotion as news of the TV series elevates demand for the book.--Latham, Bethany Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS, by Joyce Carol Oates. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $19.99.) Early in Oates's novel, Luther Dunphy, an evangelical, invokes the Lord just before shooting dead an abortion provider, Augustus Voorhees. The story chronicles the fallout of the killing for the Dunphy and Voorhees families, and even if it's soon clear whom Oates considers the martyrs to be, she examines the moral complexities of abortion from several sides. HIS FINAL BATTLE: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt, by Joseph Lelyveld. (Vintage, $18.) Seeking an unprecedented fourth term as president, Roosevelt was far sicker than he let on, and perhaps knew he would not live long. Lelyveld, the former executive editor of The New York Times, reviews Roosevelt's last 16 months in office, including the Manhattan Project and the culmination of World War II. DIFFICULT WOMEN, by Roxane Gay. (Grove, $16.) For many of the characters across this collection, Gay's first book of short stories, love, sex, intimacy and violence are intertwined; in the opening tale, two sisters have forged an unbreakable bond in the hands of a predator. Our reviewer, Gemma Sieff, praised "the cryptic, claustrophobic relationships described in these pages and the strange detours that riddle Gay's imaginary landscapes." LOVE FOR SALE: Pop Music in America, by David Hajdú. (Picador, $17.) From vaudeville singers and the jazz clubs of 1920s Harlem to present-day streaming services, Hajdú, a music critic for The Nation, traces the evolution of popular music over roughly the past hundred years. Weaving together his personal and critical reflections, Hajdú tries to answer a vexing set of questions: When we talk about pop music, what precisely do we mean? And does it still matter to American culture? VICTORIA, by Daisy Goodwin. (St. Martin's Griffin, $16.99) Soon after her 18th birthday, Victoria ascended to the throne. Goodwin, who adapted Victoria's biography for a PBS Masterpiece drama, focuses on the young queen's life before her marriage to Albert, as she reckons with her independence and power. As our reviewer, Priya Parmar, said, this depiction of Victoria sought out "the woman she actually was." THE BRIDGE TO BRILLIANCE: How One Woman and One Community Are Inspiring the World, by Nadia Lopez with Rebecca Paley. (Penguin, $17.) Lopez runs the Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood, and rose to prominence when the Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton visited her. She looks at the challenges educators face in reaching the nation's poorest children.
Library Journal Review
Barely 18 when she becomes queen after her uncle's death in 1837, Victoria had received little preparation to serve as monarch. Several prominent men, especially her mother's advisor, John Conroy, would be happy for a regency to supplant her rule. Insisting on her authority, Victoria finds an ally and mentor in Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, a man old enough to be her father. His suggestions and guidance give her confidence to overcome the doubts of many about a woman's ability to rule. Yet her inexperience and poor judgment result in scandal-and later a political crisis-when she publicly humiliates her mother's lady-in-waiting by falsely accusing her of being pregnant. In fact, the early part of the novel sometimes seems like an investigation of the complex political relationship between Parliament and ruler in a constitutional monarchy. In the last third of the book, Victoria-and the story-finally come into their own. However, Melbourne remains the most interesting character, ably guiding the queen and deftly deflecting her growing personal affection for him toward her cousin Albert. Perhaps Goodwin's screenplay for the related television production incorporates more of the emotional energy found in her previous novels (An American Heiress; The Fortune Hunter) but lacking in this one. Verdict With the PBS Masterpiece series about Victoria slated to begin in January, public libraries should anticipate heavy demand for this title.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.