Customer Reviews

Queen Victoria

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Strachey's book was published orginally in 1921 and was a pivotal biography according to Linda Wagner-Martin in "Telling Women's Lives - The New Biography". This book broke away from tradition and provided a deeper look at the Queen and all those around her by abandoning the notion of promoting a person's successess and strengths and instead paints the portrait of a human with weaknesses, motivations, strengths, and stuggles. The reader sees the Queen in relationships that become history and see the impact of personality in making decisions.

The book is engaging especially once Victoria moves beyond childhood and becomes Queen. The portrait of Edward and Victoria's relationship is vivid. The story provides a rich understanding of places in the lives of the royal family that continue today, namely Balmoral, and give a glimpse at the royal family culture that can be seen in current events. It is more than a book about Queen Victoria.

Enjoy!

Giles Lytton Strachey was an early 20th century writer and biographer who developed a reputation for writing biographies that dealt with individuals as people, rather than the events they were associated with. His 1921 biography of the British monarch, Queen Victoria, is a highly readable insight into this long-reigning queen.

Many public domain books can be slow to read, with language that is sometimes archaic when compared to contemporary writing. This is not the case with Strachey's work. Not only does it thoroughly cover Victoria's life from childhood to death, but it is an engaging read that explores Victoria's relationships, both personal and professional. I particularly liked reading of the love between Victoria and her husband, Albert, much of which is detailed in Victoria's journals and letters. I also enjoyed Strachey's turn of phrase and his ability to create such effective word-pictures of this fascinating monarch and her life.

If you have any interest in history or curiosity about British monarchs I think you will enjoy this book. I certainly did - far more than I expected to.

Brings Queen Victoria into a very different light , shows that shes a woman above all , the book touches the love story of the century gone that was her marriage to Albert

This is (I'm ashamed to say) the first biography I've read since high school. It was well written, engaging and descriptive without being boring. I'm so glad I stumbled across this book. It has inspired me to find other biographies of the royal family. The only drawback, in my opinion, is that a third of the book was essentially a biography of Prince Albert. However, the book also eloquently gives a tangible picture of who she was as a young woman before the throne and how she matured as a daughter, a wife, a mother and the Queen of England.

This is an okay book. There were moments where I had to restart a paragraph because I ended up getting lost. It was the first book I read on my Kindle, so maybe it was getting use to that. It dragged from when Prince Albert died until the end. I felt like it was cut up quite a bit, as well. The Kindle version was apparently edited by a volunteer and it was free, so maybe it was that. But overall, it is a good book to read if you would like to learn a little on Victoria's life.