Evelyn Anthony

#2

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she had ruled for nearly sixty-four years. She was a mother of nine and grandmother of forty-two and the matriarch of royal Europe through her children’s marriages. To many, Queen Victoria is a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, an aging, stiff widow paraded as the figurehead to an all-male imperial enterprise. But in truth, Britain's longest-reigning monarch was one of the most passionate, expressive, humorous and unconventional women who ever lived, and the story of her life continues to fascinate. A. N. Wilson's exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources to show us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before. Wilson explores the curious set of circumstances that led to Victoria's coronation, her strange and isolated childhood, her passionate marriage to Prince Albert and his pivotal influence even after death and her widowhood and subsequent intimate friendship with her Highland servant John Brown, all set against the backdrop of this momentous epoch in Britain’s history — and the world’s. Born at the very moment of the expansion of British political and commercial power across the globe, Victoria went on to chart a unique course for her country even as she became the matriarch of nearly every great dynasty of Europe. Her destiny was thus interwoven with those of millions of people — not just in Europe but in the ever-expanding empire that Britain was becoming throughout the nineteenth century. The famed queen had a face that adorned postage stamps, banners, statues and busts all over the known world. Wilson's Victoria is a towering achievement, a masterpiece of biography by a writer at the height of his powers.

#3

1991

[From Amazon] In 1837, an eighteen-year-old girl ascended the throne of Great Britain, and within three years Victoria had established herself and the Crown as a major power in politics. Much has been written of her marriage to Albert, but little has been included of the struggle between husband and wife. Evelyn Anthony now recreates the Victorian past to tell the story of that love, and how Victoria eventually came to love her husband better than herself or her own power. * [From jacket] "The King is dead, God save the Queen." When Victoria heard these words, she was a tiny, blue-eyed, fair-haired girl, scarcely eighteen and bearing little resemblance to the formidable Widow of Windsor she later became. But this is a novel, about Victoria the wife, not the widow, beginning with youth and marriage and ending, as a vital part of Victoria's life ended, with the death of Albert, the only person she ever loved. Evelyn Anthony's portrait of the Queen and her consort is touching and moving. Victoria's intense nature prevented halfway measures, and her passion for Albert increased rather than diminished in their twenty-one years of marriage. She loved so blindly that she never once realized that he did not in turn love her. But they were nevertheless very close; and there is a fascinating intimacy in this skillful reconstruction of their daily life, their conversations, their houses and furniture and clothing, their trips abroad, their relations with their nine children - particularly the Prince of Wales. The indomitable Queen is here, as well as the loving wife; and Albert, far from being merely a shadowy figure in the background, attains real dimension as a man, not just as Victoria's husband. As readers of Anne Boleyn and other books by Miss Anthony will recall, she is greatly adept at conveying the atmosphere of a Court and the personages surrounding it. Melbourne and Palmerston and Peel and other great figures play their part in the story, as do the stirring and troublous historic events of he first two decades of Victoria's reign. There have been many books about Victoria, ranging from the satirical to the dull. Victoria and Albert has the distinction of presenting her as a vulnerable human being.