Queen Victoria

Written in 1921, Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria revolutionized the art of biography by using elements of romantic fiction and melodrama to create a warm, humorous, and very human portrait of an iconic figure. We see Victoria as a strong–willed child with a famous temper, as the eighteen–year–old girl–Queen, as a monarch, wife, mother, and widow. Equally fascinating are the depictions of her relationships: with her governess “precious Lehzen,” with Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli, with her beloved Albert, and, in later life, her legendary devotion to her Highland servant John Brown, all of which illuminate an altogether different side to Victoria’s staid, pious image.