Queen Victoria

On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had hardly been a happy one. By nature impuls...

The child who, in these not very impressive circumstances, appeared in the world, received but scant attention. There was small reason to foresee her destiny. The Duchess of Cla...

FUNDAMENTAL RULE, TO BE FIRM, AND COURAGEOUS, AND HONEST, AS YOU HAVE BEEN TILL NOW." For the rest, in the crisis that was approaching, she was not to be alarmed, but to trust i...

The new queen was almost entirely unknown to her subjects. In her public appearances her mother had invariably dominated the scene. Her private life had been that of a novice in...

It was decidedly a family match. Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg--Gotha--for such was his full title--had been born just three months after his co...

In 1851 the Prince's fortunes reached their high-water mark. The success of the Great Exhibition enormously increased his reputation and seemed to assure him henceforward a lead...

The weak-willed youth who took no interest in polities and never read a newspaper had grown into a man of unbending determination whose tireless energies were incessantly concen...

The death of the Prince Consort was the central turning-point in the history of Queen Victoria. She herself felt that her true life had ceased with her husband's, and that the r...

Lord Palmerston's laugh--a queer metallic "Ha! ha! ha!" with reverberations in it from the days of Pitt and the Congress of Vienna--was heard no more in Piccadilly; Lord John Ru...

Meanwhile in Victoria's private life many changes and developments had taken place. With the marriages of her elder children her family circle widened; grandchildren appeared; a...

The evening had been golden; but, after all, the day was to close in cloud and tempest. Imperial needs, imperial ambitions, involved the country in the South African War. There...