Victoria

Author: Daisy Goodwin
Genre: Biography
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2017
Pages: 432 (10 Discs)
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Drawing on Queen Victoria's diaries, which she first started reading when she was a student at Cambridge University, Daisy Goodwin - creator and writer of the new PBS Masterpiece drama Victoria and the author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter -- brings the young nineteenth-century monarch, who would go on to reign for 63 years, richly to live in this magnificent novel.


Early one morning, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died and she is now Queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman, who stands less than five feet tall, can rule the greatest nation in the world.

Despite her age, however, the young queen is no puppet. She has definite ideas about the kind of queen she wants to be, and the first thing is to choose her name.

"I do not like the name Alexandrina," she proclaims. "From now on I wish to be known only by my second name, Victoria."

Next, people say she must choose a husband. Everyone keeps telling her she's destined to marry her first cousin, Prince Albert, but Victoria found him dull and priggish when they met three years ago. She is quite happy being queen with the help of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who may be old enough to be her father but is the first person to take her seriously.

On June 19, 1837, she was a teenager. On June 20, 1837, she was queen. Daisy Goodwin's impeccably researched and vividly imagined new book brings readers Queen Victoria as they have never seen her before.

Review: I wanted a short audio book, and picked Victoria off the shelf at the library. This may have been a case of "choosing a book by its cover." 

I have a casual interest in the English royal family, but don't know much about Victoria herself. I still don't know much about her after having listened to this novel. This ended up being more about her love interests / and relationships with her prime minister, her mother, her cousins, etc. 

It is also common knowledge that she married Prince Albert, but the road to the proposal was painfully drawn out. Overall, I was disappointed with this novel, but maybe my expectations were misplaced.

I'm glad my husband and I watched Downtown Abbey because it gave me an understanding how the class system in English works, and the hierarchy of those in servitude, and their roles. That's helpful information when reading novels set in England.