Eminent Victorians: An Omnibus

0/5 ( ratings)

A special collection of biographies on four eminent Victorians.

Queen Victoria, Her Glorious Life and Illustrious Reign
Who was the woman behind the throne?

Queen Victoria, daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, was the only living grandchild of King George III, becoming upon her father’s death the heir-apparent to the English throne.

Victoria’s time as queen spanned nearly three-quarters of a century that saw marked change in England as well as around the world in industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military matters.

Her marriage to Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was widely considered a love match, with Victoria going into seclusion following his death in 1861 and remaining in mourning black for the rest of her life.

Unlike England’s former queen, Elizabeth I, Victoria not only married but produced nine children, the second of whom became King Edward VII upon his mother’s death in 1901.

Many of Victoria’s children made alliances with the royal and noble families of the rest of Europe and Russia through their marriages, creating deep-seated links between the major powers of the late nineteenth century. She had at the time of her death sixty-six direct descendants.

Thomas W. Handford’s account is largely devoted to Victoria’s domestic and maternal roles rather than the role she played in England and the world at large.

All Alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë
Emily Brontë was one of six Bronte children born in quick succession. Famous for the novel Wuthering Heights she, and her sisters, are major figures of English Literature.

Biographer Rowan Wilson, a Yorkshire woman herself, presents a hypothesis of Emily’s life based on the poems and fiction she wrote.

One theory presented is of Emily being shut up in a room, most likely the room her mother died in … potentially a haunted room, by her Aunt Branwell.

Palmerston
A figure described as “the last candle of the Eighteenth Century”, Lord Palmerston was the great statesman of his era. He served in the War Office in the days of Empire, then in the Foreign and Home Offices before ascending to Prime Minister very late in his life, an office which he held twice.

A controversial figure still today, this is the biographical account of a man who shaped the future of the British nation and empire.

This detail-rich and historically aware account of Palmerston’s life is regarded as one of the best biographies on this eminent figure.

My Friendship with Oscar Wilde: The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas
“No other living creature has been treated as I have been treated, and has invoked in vain, as I have done, the law of his country to help him against a conspiracy of persecution and blackmail which has gone on for more than thirty years, and is still going on to this day.”

So writes Lord Alfred Douglas in his memoir, originally published in 1929, in which he sought to rehabilitate his name and that of Oscar Wilde.In his memoir he offers his own view on the events of the previous sixty years of his life using letters and articles.

He also refutes the rumours spread by Wilde himself, including one where he denied receiving any money from his old friend in his final years.