Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III [Hardcover]

Flora Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2005

From acclaimed biographer Flora Fraser, a brilliant group biography of the six daughters of “Mad” King George III.
Fraser takes us into the heart of the British royal family during the tumultuous period of the American and French revolutions and beyond, illuminating the complicated lives of these exceptional women: Princess Royal, the eldest, constantly at odds with her mother; home-loving, family-minded Augusta; plump Elizabeth, a gifted amateur artist; Mary, the bland beauty of the family; Sophia, emotional and prone to take refuge in illness; and Amelia, “the most turbulent and tempestuous of all the Princesses.” Weaving together letters and historical accounts, Fraser re-creates their world in all its frustrations and excitements.

The six sisters, though handsome, accomplished and extremely well educated, were kept from marrying by George III, and Fraser describes how they remained subject to their father for many years, while he teetered on the brink of mental collapse. The King may have believed that his six daughters were happy to live celibately at Windsor, but secretly, as Fraser’s absorbing narrative of royal repression and sexual license shows, the sisters enjoyed startling freedom. Several of them, torn between love for their ailing father and longing for independence, forged their own scandalous and subversive lives within the castle walls. With a discerning eye for psychological detail and a keen feminist sensibility, Fraser delves into these clandestine love affairs, revealing the truth about Sophia’s illegitimate baby; examining Amelia's intimate correspondence with her soldier-lover; and investigating the eventual marriages of Princesses Royal, Elizabeth and Mary.

Never before has the historical searchlight been turned with such sympathy and acuity on George III and his family. With unparalleled access to royal and private family papers, Flora Fraser has created a revelatory portrait of six fascinating women and their place in history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

King George III of England (1760–1820) and his queen, Charlotte, had 15 children, among them six daughters, on whom Fraser (The Unruly Queen) focuses her family portrait. She depicts royals who attempted to live a rather homey life, but were torn both by the king's famous madness and by complex political and affectionate alliances within the family itself. Fraser has a great source that she uses extensively: the prolific and elegant letters of Charlotte and her daughters. Their correspondence reveals personalities and daily details that attach the reader to their lives. The letters are at times less informative than suggestive; over-reliance on them contributes a wandering quality to the narrative and too many precious tidbits that Fraser apparently couldn't bear to leave out. She also tends to set up situations that take too long to play out, the most significant being the onset of George's madness. The madness, though, is at the center of the women's lives: it not only helped weaken the monarchy further, it wrecked a happy marriage, created rifts out of family tensions and contributed to only three of George's talented daughters marrying, and then too late in life to have children, while two others triggered scandal with their affairs. It's a sad and fascinating story. 24 pages of color illus. Agent, Jonathan Lloyd.(Apr. 8)

From Booklist

Henry VIII had six wives, but George III had as many daughters, and the half-dozen female offspring of that long-reigning and ever-productive king (who also fathered nine sons) are the collective subject of this greatly involving biography by the author of The Unruly Queen (1996), a well-respected chronicle of George III's daughter-in-law, Queen Caroline. The reader may find it difficult at first to keep straight all the princesses, their names, their individual personalities, and their place in the lineup of siblings but soon will comfortably ease into Fraser's expansive, leisurely, but certainly not dawdling narrative, which opens into a rich tapestry of sheltered lives and parental restrictions. Fraser, in her immaculately professional manner, gives ample evidence of how the king's possessiveness toward his daughters, as well as the effect of his disastrous physical and mental breakdown on not only the country but also the royal household, channeled each of the six princesses into "subversive behavior and even acts of desperation." Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition. states edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679451188
• ISBN-13: 978-0679451181
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #643,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dutiful Daughters, April 25, 2005

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III (Hardcover)

Flora Fraser is the next generation in the fine biographical/historical tradition of her mother Lady Antonia Fraser and her late grandmother Elizabeth (Countess of) Longford. Like her forebears, Fraser combines scholarship with an elegant and witty writing style to produce books which illuminate and engage.

King George III's six daughters tend to get short shrift from historians and biographers who focus on their father, their brothers, and their niece Queen Victoria. The prevailing picture of them is of six mousy women pushed into the background. Fraser has pulled Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia out of the shadows and let us see that they had strong personalities and lives of their own.

The six princesses were victims of circumstance even more than most eighteenth century royal women. Ordinarily they would have been married off to men they scarcely knew almost as soon as they reached puberty in order to strengthen Britain's alliances. George III, however, had been horrified by the ill treatment two of his own sisters received at the hands of unloving husbands, and he was determined that his own daughters would not suffer such a fate. Unfortunately his paternal affections did not extend to allowing his daughters to marry Englishmen they loved, and only meant that he turned down overtures from many foreign princes, usually without consulting his daughters at all. Furthermore, as the princesses reached marriageable age the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars meant many possible suitors were now the enemies of Britain and thus out of bounds. Finally, George III's bouts of madness/porphyria attacks made him unable to entertain marriage offers, and his wife Queen Charlotte's deep depression over her husband's malady meant that she could not be a matchmaker either.

Bereft of the chance to be proper wives and mothers (the only acceptable role for nearly all women of the period) the princesses lived under their parents' noses well into middle age. They developed literary and artistic interests and were patrons of British charities, and managed little flirtations and dalliances here and there with gentlemen of the court. One of Augusta's liaisons possibly ended in (an illegal) marriage, while Sophia actually produced an illegitimate child. The princesses were dutiful and loving children to their increasingly difficult parents and were supportive siblings to their rackety brothers, who were also denied the chance to legally marry women they loved.

It was only in middle age that some of the daughters married, Charlotte and Elizabeth to German princelings, Mary to an English cousin. Charlotte probably had the most adventurous life, living in Wurttemburg right through several invasions by Napoleon and having to flee for her life at one point (Fraser's description of her life in temporary exile, accompanied by two kangaroos, is among the most amusing of the many anecdotes in the book.)

The fine human qualities of the daughters are well portrayed here. I felt sorriest for Amelia, whose unrequited love for an English officer lasted until her death in 1810. I was impressed with the love the daughters showed for their parents and their brothers, and by the love their brothers gave them in return. (Usually the later Hanoverians are depicted as self-indulgent reprobates devoid of any finer qualities.) Finally, the love and regard the daughters had for each other, going to great trouble to visit when one was ill for example, is admirable.

The final years of the daughters were quiet, marked by illness and decline, but I was glad to see that they were not lonely ones, but rather filled with visits from their surviving siblings and other relations and friends. There is a charming photograph in the book of Queen Victoria with two of her children visiting Mary, the last survivor. It is a fitting end to this story of six women who, though related to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people of their time, enjoyed unassuming and generally unremarked upon lives.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the Six lives of George III's Daughters?, July 23, 2005

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III (Hardcover)

Known popularly as the Nunnery, the 6 daughters of George III led sheltered and almost monastic lives. Shut up in a stultifying court, with little chance of escape too often their lives, and their plight, have been overlooked - or speculated on to the detriment of what is known, or can be proven.

There have been a few recent attempts to try to rectify this, usually within biographies of either their father or their brothers. Dorothy Stuart's biography has been the best atetmpt so far (in my opinion) but Fraser's account exceeds this in many ways. Whether she had access to better information, or simply resisted over-speculating, this account is definitely a cut above the rest.

George III and his wife had 6 daughters and 6 sons. And the difference in the lives is astonishing. While the sons, almost to a man, went out and lived profligate lives, wasting the privy purse and shacking up with actresses. The daughters were kept under strict purdah only allowed to participate in court life. Although at times they begged for marriage their prospects were limited. There was little chance generally for them to be married at a time when Britain was almost entirely cut off from the continent thanks to conflict withfrench and later napoleon. But also because G III had seen his own sisters suffer in unhappy marriages.

It may seem a dull subject for a biograpy...yet many contributing factors make this well worth reading. The lives of teh daughters were dictated to by the impending madness of their father (a fate you wonder might not have been visited on at least one or two of the brothers as well). The strange life at court which is an alien world with its formality etc to us now.

Also later two of the daughters married, and the letters used are wonderful, rich and at times hilarious.

I recommend this book in the highest, you will really enjoy it and come away with a great understanding of Georgian England and Court life in a painless and fun way.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Lives Stories, Well Told, April 13, 2005

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John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III (Hardcover)

Perhaps best known in the United States as being the British king who wanted the colonies to pay for military protection with things like the tax on tea, George III was King of England from 1760 until 1820. He fathered fifteen children, six of whom were daughters, this is their story.

The King's growing madness is heavily emphasized in this story. And this is fitting because this was a growing part of the lives of the children. Ms. Fraser did a remarkable job with this book. It is based on the extensive letters between Queen Charlotte and the six girls. It is not a typical biography talking of the major events of King George's rule, it is the personal story of this group of women trying to live a semi-normal life amidst life at the court.

It is a fascinating book that looks at a time far removed from ours.