Customer Reviews

Life at the Court of Queen Victoria

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A very excellent book for those interested into the aspects of Queen Victoria's court life. A definite must read. This is a rare jewel of a find.

She was a tiny, extraordinarily plain lady, barely five feet tall (although at the end of her life she weighed 170 pounds). She was meddlesome, selfish, but amazingly down-to-earth, sturdy as the Rock of Gibraltar, the symbol of integrity and the heart of the British Empire. She crowned an era with her name. Victoria. There has never been anyone like her and she's irresistible.

This beautifully illustrated journey into Victoria's court will titillate, amuse and fascinate you. Luckily for us, Victoria's Master of the Household- Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton- had kept an incredible scrapbook of the Victorian years and it is this memorabilia that illustrates this remarkable book.

The running narrative for the book is Victoria's own journal, almost seventy years of astute, opinionated observations, the horse's mouth if there ever was one. You'll look over Victoria's shoulder as she writes in her diary- in her frank way- of everything. (The Queen simply could not prevaricate and she said it as she saw it). She didn't like Wagner's face, loathed poor Gladstone but adored Benjamin Disraeli, agonized over the deaths of Prince Eddy and so many others in her family, including two of her own sons. She bemoaned her own physical weaknesses (but without self-pity) as her life drew to a close.

There are marvelous reproductions of beautifully engraved dinner menus, wedding announcements, even train schedules that'll take you right to the scene and make you part of it. The photographs are rare and wonderful: little Beatrice with her long fair hair, the arrogant Kaiser Wilhelm II, Dickens and Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde. There are gorgeous full color reproductions of paintings such as the wedding of Bertie Prince of Wales and of Sir Edwin Landseer sculpting the lions for Trafalgar.Victoria had a charming talent for drawing and you'll see many sketches she did of her own children as well as an interesting one of Lehzen, her old governess.

"Life at the Court of Queen Victoria" is a wonderful potpourri, very, very satisfying to the Queen Victoria buff! Don't miss it!

This books is an absolute treasure - filled with all kinds of wonderful details such as the seating plan at Queen Victoria's Jubilee dinner, and lots of beautiful illustrations of menu cards and entertainments. Snippets from the Queen's diaries and wonderful pictures...It's a book to return to again and again. I love it!!

Most Beautiful Princess