Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon Hardcover – April 1, 2014

It is interesting to know that there were image makers even back then. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a long time to undo the filtered information.

Yvonne M. Ward took an interesting feminist view of how the public image of Queen Victoria was managed by the two men who edited the first three volumes of her letters. Both of them venerated the elderly queen, but were completely out of sync with the lively, interesting young queen who would have been revealed in those letters if they had used different other selection criteria in their choice of which ones to include, and even more importantly, which ones to exclude. I have read all nine volumes of the letters of Queen Victoria's letters and I think that Ms. Ward got it exactly right--there is a sameness and an old-lady quality to the collection, from the first ones written when she was in her teens, all the way up to her old age. How she describes the process of encasing that fun-loving young woman in a personality created by the editors of the first three volumes, covering from 1837 to Prince Albert's death in 1861, is fascinating thing to read. I hope that she will continue her analysis with the remaining six volumes.

This book seemed to be more about the two gentlemen who edited Victoria's life than about Victoria.

It was a interesting book but slow.

At last someone has taken the trouble to delve beneath the surface and uncover why so much nonsense is presented about Queen Victoria nowadays! This is a fascinating book which is both informative and easy to read and approaches the story of the Queen from an entirely new perspective. It sheds a great deal of light on the characters who first edited Victoria's letters and explains why so many important details are omitted. In many ways it is disturbing to realise that these troubled men have been responsible for creating an incomplete and often inauthentic portrayal of Victoria, and it is wonderful that, all these years later, this author has presented the truth! Highly recommended!

Just not my cup of tea

This book was surprisingly poorly edited.

For many years I have been very interested in Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their family. I have purchased all the volumes of Queen Victoria’s Journals by Viscount Escher and Arthur C. Benson and, in fact, read this immediately after reading the Girlhood of Queen Victoria (which I enjoyed). Naturally, I was excited to read a book about the two men behind the books and how the books came to be published for public reading. While I liked learning about the process, I was a little confused why the author felt it necessary to discuss the intimate lives of these men (homosexuality, pedophilia). Gay, strait, bi, whatever sexual orientation an individual identifies themselves as, I was a little perplexed why the sexual exploits of these men (I would hardly call them gentlemen) were added to the book. It is possible that the author had little material to work with and was looking for some (in my opinion, irrelevant) material to make the book longer. If it was a book about homosexuality in England during the late Victorian era into the Edwardian era, I would have no complaint. It added nothing to the book and, outside of their sexual exploits, I found myself knowing almost nothing about these men. It is possible that there isn’t much information about them available or that their lives were less than exciting (which is fine. We can’t all lead lives of scandal and adventure). I finished the book in three days and was left with a lingering question: was this book really necessary? It’s not badly written and the subject matter is interesting, if not terribly stimulating. Sadly, I feel the book was written more for the purpose of making money and less for any real interest or passion for the subjects. It’s an easy read and not overwhelmed with complicated details. I just wonder: why did it need to be written?

At last someone has taken the trouble to delve beneath the surface and uncover why so much nonsense is presented about Queen Victoria nowadays! This is a fascinating book which is both informative and easy to read and approaches the story of the Queen from an entirely new perspective. It sheds a great deal of light on the characters who first edited Victoria's letters and explains why so many important details are omitted. In many ways it is disturbing to realise that these troubled men have been responsible for creating an incomplete and often inauthentic portrayal of Victoria, and it is wonderful that, all these years later, this author has presented the truth! Highly recommended!

This book is quite an achievement. You simply would not guess that it started off as a PhD thesis. The friend who is acknowledged as doing the first abridgement deserves great praise. The book itself is a fascinating account of the various pressures that led to the published version of Queen Victoria's correspondence in the early years of her reign. Some of those pressures were self-inflicted, mostly by Lord Esher the prime mover; others derived from the King and those around him, ever sensitive to possible slights, a real problem given the range and frequent candour of QV's interventions. Well done, and a riveting read.

should be called what men can blame on a woman and be famous for.

Interesting slant by the author.

A good read, if you like reading what really goes on behind the scenes, not a life I would wish on anyone.