• Complain

Lucy Worsley - Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life

Here you can read online Lucy Worsley - Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2019, publisher: St. Martin’s Press, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Lucy Worsley Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life
  • Book:
    Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    St. Martin’s Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2019
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The story of the queen who defied convention and defined an era
Perhaps one of the best known of the English monarchs, Queen Victoria forever shaped a chapter of English history, bequeathing her name to the Victorian age. In Queen Victoria, Lucy Worsley introduces this iconic woman in a new light. Going beyond an exploration of the Queen merely as a monarch, Worsley considers Victoria as a woman leading a truly extraordinary life in a unique time period. The book is structured around the various roles that Victoria inhabited a daughter raised to wield power, a loving but tempestuous wife, a controlling mother, and a cunning widowall while wearing the royal crown.
Far from a proto-feminist, Queen Victoria was socially conservative and never supported womens rights. And yet, Victoria thwarted the strict rules of womanhood that defined the era to which she gave her name. She was passionate, selfish, and moody, boldly defying the will of politicians who sought to control her and emotionally controlling her family for decades. How did the woman who defined Victorian womanhood also manage to defy its conventions?
Drawing from the vast collection of Victorias correspondence and the rich documentation of her life, Worsley recreates twenty-four of the most important days in Victorias life including her parents wedding day, the day she met Albert, her own wedding day, the birth of her first child, a Windsor Christmas, the death of Prince Albert, and many more. Each day gives a glimpse into the identity of this powerful, difficult queen as a wife and widow, mother and matriarch, and above all, a woman of her time.

Lucy Worsley: author's other books


Who wrote Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
Contents
Guide

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: http://us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Thank you for buying this

A Hodder & Stoughton Book ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Queen Victoria Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life - image 1

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

LUCY WORSLEY is an historian author curator and television presenter Lucy - photo 2

LUCY WORSLEY is an historian, author, curator and television presenter. Lucy read Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford and worked for English Heritage before becoming Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, based at Hampton Court. She also presents history programmes for the BBC including Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley and Lucy Worsleys Reins of Power: The Art of Horse Dancing. Her bestselling books include A Very British Murder: The Curious Story of how Crime was Turned into Art, If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, Courtiers: the Secret History of the Georgian Court and Cavalier: The Story of a 17th century Playboy. She lives in London, England. You can sign up for author updates here.

NONFICTION Cavalier A Tale of Chivalry Passion and Great Houses The - photo 3

NONFICTION Cavalier A Tale of Chivalry Passion and Great Houses The - photo 4

NONFICTION

Cavalier: A Tale of Chivalry, Passion, and Great Houses

The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace

If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

A Very British Murder

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

FICTION

Eliza Rose

My Name Is Victoria

Lady Mary

Queen Victoria
Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life
LUCY WORSLEY

QUEEN VICTORIA Copyright 2018 by Lucy Worsley All rights reserved Printed - photo 5

QUEEN VICTORIA . Copyright 2018 by Lucy Worsley. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. For information, address
St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Worsley, Lucy, author.

Title: Queen Victoria : twenty-four days that changed her life / Lucy Worsley.

Description: New York : St. Martins Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018039820 | ISBN 9781250201423 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250201430 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 18191901. | QueensGreat BritainBiography. | Great BritainHistoryVictoria, 18371901.

Classification: LCC DA554 .W87 2018 | DDC 941.081092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039820

Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at .

First published in Great Britain by

Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company

First U.S. Edition: January 2019

To Ned and Mark

A n early piano composition of mine entitled Purple Velvet for Queen Victoria - photo 6

A n early piano composition of mine, entitled Purple Velvet for Queen Victoria, was a sombre and rather menacing funeral march. Like many kids, I grew up believing that the queen was, for some unknown reason, in mourning her whole life long. The most powerful, memorable images of Victoria show her as a little old lady, potato-like in appearance, dressed in everlasting black.

In recent years, there have been many attempts in popular culture for example, the cinema film Young Victoria, or the television series Victoria to overturn this funereal image. The big and small screens have both shown us a less decorous, more passionate young princess who loved dancing. We seem to have ended up with two Victorias, bearing no clear relationship to each other. How did she go from dancing princess to potato?

Thats a tale worth telling, but in this book I also want to present a third Victoria. The little old lady, sullen in expression, gloomy in dress, proved to be a remarkably successful queen, one who invented a new role for the monarchy. She found a way of being a respected sovereign in an age when people were deeply uncomfortable with having a woman on the throne.

Perhaps the Victorians were even less comfortable with women in power than, say, the Tudors, with Elizabeth I, or the Stuarts, with Queen Anne. I believe that Victoria got around this by working out rather a clever way of ruling that we might characterise as stereotypically feminine. She operated by instinct rather than logic, emotion rather than intellect. This turned out to be perfect for an institution like the monarchy. It had lost its cold hard power, but it might through gesture and spectacle be able to retain its influence. The accident of her gender turned out to be just what the monarchy needed.

But what did this cost Victoria as a human being? An awful lot, I think. As well as a queen, she was also a daughter, a wife and a widow, and at each of these steps along lifes journey, she had to perform all sorts of troubling mental contortions to conform to what society demanded of a woman. On the face of it, she was deeply socially conservative. The idea of votes for women, for example, disgusted her. But if you look at her actions rather than her words, she was in fact tearing up the rulebook for how to be female.

And Im particularly interested in Victorias years as a widow. Her early life was so traumatic and dramatic that biographers in the past have tended to concentrate upon it, and theres a plethora of books about the young queen. Only in maturity did she come out of the shadow of her husbands domineering personality, to emerge imperious, eccentric and really rather magnificent.

People in the process of writing a biography are often asked, do you like your subject? In the case of Victoria, the answer is complex. She could be a monster. Her children could have told you of terrible flaws in her parenting. She could be inconsistent, dictatorial and selfish. But her own horrid upbringing, redeemed only by occasional bright shafts of love and light, means that it would be a stony heart that felt no pity for the human being she was.

And theres much to admire too. She was never vain. She was, in her peculiar way, hard-working, and deeply committed to her unchosen task. Her job made impossible demands upon her, and yet theres a sense of buoyancy about her, and idiosyncrasy, and an energy that sweeps you onto her side. I think that her life was, all things considered, a hard one. Not materially hard, but hard in the sense that enormous wealth and celebrity can put pressure on a human being. She required massive mental resilience. So, do I like her? The answer is yes, initially hesitant, but ultimately resounding.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life»

Look at similar books to Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life»

Discussion, reviews of the book Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.