Everybody knows Victoria married a chap called Albert and wore black clothes - all the time. But did you know that Victoria: Went on her holidays in disguise? Was best pals with herrude Scottish servant? Everything you could ever want to know about Queen Victoria!

The race to the crown -- The birth of "pocket Hercules"--The lonely, naughty princess -- An impossible, strange madness -- "Awful scenes in the house"--Becoming queen: "I shall not fail" -- The coronation: "a dream out of the Arabian nights" -- Learning to rule -- A scandal in the palace -- Virago in love -- The bride: "I never, never spent such an evening" -- Only the husband, not the master -- The palace intruders -- King to all intents: "like a vulture into his prey" -- Perfect, awful, spotless prosperity -- Annus Mirabilis: the revolutionary year -- What Albert did: the Great Exhibition of 1851 -- The Crimea: 'This unsatisfactory war' -- London boils over -- Royal parents: "everything passes so quickly!" -- "Who will call me Victoria now?" -- "The whole house seems like Pompeii." -- Resuscitating the widow at Windsor -- The queen's stallion -- The faery queen awakes -- Enough to kill any man -- Two ironclads colliding: the queen and Mr. Gladstone -- The monarch in a bonnet -- The "poor munshi" -- The diamond empire -- The end of the Victorian Age - "The streets were indeed a strange sight

Part of The World in a Life series, this brief, inexpensive text provides insight into the life of Queen Victoria. As one of the longest reigning monarchs in British history, Queen Victoria gave her name to an age filled with enormous possibilities and perplexing contradictions. At the time of Victoria's birth, Britain ruled over what was fast becoming the greatest empire in the world, containing millions of non-white, non-Christian peoples. During her childhood and youth, the kingdom itself became transformed from one dominated by landed aristocrats to one governed according to the principles of bourgeois liberalism. The royal family served as the most visible symbol of domesticity, while at the same time Victoria's very position as queen defied the ideology of separate spheres upon which domesticity rested. Victoria, the ruler of millions of people, opposed women participating in politics or public life. She believed women's suffrage to be a "wicked folly" and a violation of God's laws. She never gave up that belief, even as the fledging feminist movement of mid-century matured and grew to the size of a mass movement by the end of the century. And yet she reigned, with little thought of the contradictions that entailed. We live in a global age where big concepts like "globalization" often tempt us to forget the personal side of the past. The titles in The World in a Life series aim to revive these meaningful lives. Each one shows us what it was like to live on a world historical stage. Brief, inexpensive, and thematic, each book can be read in a week, fit within a wide range of curricula, and shed insight into a particular place or time. Four to six short primary sources at the end of each volume sharpen the reader's view of an individual's impact on world history.

Features the court of Britain's longest-reigning monarch Royalty and the Victorian era, with coverage of the people, pageantry, and power of Queen Victoria's court. Beginning with the Queen's 1897 Diamond Jubilee, this book describes her long reign. It paints a portrait of a unique ruler at the height of empire.

Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian Era, a period of industrial, cultural, scientific, and political change that was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. But Victoria was raised under close supervision and near isolation until she became Queen of the United Kingdom at the young age of 18. She married her first cousin, Albert, and had nine children who married into families across Europe. By the time she had earned the nickname “The Grandmother of Europe” and the title “Empress of India” it was indeed true that the sun never set on the British Empire. Publicly, she became a national icon, but privately, Who Was Queen Victoria?