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    Victoria
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    Victoria
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    Victoria
    Audiobook18 hours

    Victoria

    Written by Julia Baird

    Narrated by Claire Franklin

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    The extraordinary story of the world's most influential, intriguing and surprising ruler, Queen Victoria.

    When Alexandrina Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 20 June 1837, she was 18 years old and barely five feet tall. Her subjects were fascinated and intrigued; some felt sorry for her. Writer Thomas Carlyle, watching her gilded coach draw away from the coronation, said: 'Poor little Queen, she is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself; yet a task is laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.'

    Queen Victoria is long dead, but in truth she has shaped us from the grave. She was a tiny, powerful woman who reigned for an astonishing 64 years. By the time of her Diamond Jubilee Procession in 1897, she reigned over a fourth of the inhabitable part of the world, had 400 million subjects, and had given birth to nine children. Suffrage, anti-poverty and anti-slavery movements can all be traced to her monumental reign, along with a profound rethinking of family life and the rise of religious doubt. When she died, in 1901, she was the longest reigning monarch in English history. Victoria is truly the woman who made the modern world.

    A fascinating, provocative and authoritative new biography of Queen Victoria which will make us see her in a new light, from one of Australia's most admired and respected journalists and commentators, Julia Baird.

    'Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch. Right out of the gate, the book thrums with authority as Baird builds her portrayal of Victoria. Overturning stereotypes, she rips this queen down to the studs and creates her anew.' The New York Times

    Shortlisted for the 2017 ABIA Awards and the 2017 NSW Premiers History Awards, longlisted for the 2017 Stella Awards and the 2017 Walkley Awards.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 21, 2018
    ISBN9781460797099
    Unavailable
    Victoria
    Author

    Julia Baird

    Julia Baird is a Sydney-based author and journalist. She writes columns for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the ABC. She is a former co-host of The Drum on ABC TV, senior editor of Newsweek in New York, Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and op-ed contributor for the New York Times and the Philadelphia Enquirer. Her first book, Media Tarts, was based on her PhD in History about the portrayal of female politicians. Victoria, her biography of Queen Victoria, was published globally to critical acclaim and was one of the New York Times' top ten books of 2016. Her third book, Phosphorescence, was a multi-award-winning international bestseller. Bright Shining has been shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Julia lives near the sea with her two children and an abnormally large dog.

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    Reviews for Victoria

    4/5

    146 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is the best biography of Queen Victoria I have read with lots of personal details that I previously had not known. It humanized and cast Victoria in a completely differ
    • 4/5
      Queen Victoria gave her name to an age, but I'd not really considered her life as a whole until this biography. Spanning almost the entire nineteenth century (Victoria was born in 1819 and passed away in 1901), Victoria's life provides an interesting prism through which to gain insight into Europe from the end of the Napoleonic war to beginning of World War I. Indeed, Victoria's many children and family relationships played a role in creating the circumstances which led to the first world war. Victoria as a person was also intriguing - a woman both of her time and one who challenged it as well, as only a woman ruling during a patriarchal age can. This is an excellent biography for those hoping to understand Victoria and her era better.
    • 4/5
      A very well done biography of Victoria focused on Victoria the person and woman. It provides a good view of who she was, and who she wasn't. She was a contraction of a very strong woman who was not a feminist, but inspired many. I did not realize before this book how completely Albert was in effect King before he died in all but title, but after his passing Victoria really came into her own. For anyone who is interested in Victoria I would recommend this book. The reason I take a star off is that I find it *too* focused on her as a person, and not enough of the politics, events of the time and how they influenced her reign. Not to say those aren't in the biography at all, but not as much as I'd like.
    • 5/5
      This lengthy tome is a thorough account of Queen Victoria’s private and public life. Excerpts from Victoria’s letters are particularly interesting. Sometimes she comes across as selfish and self-pitying, while her low opinions of some of her children (usually because of their looks) is unnatural for a mother, though one must bear in mind her status and the period she lived through.For me, the most engaging years of Victoria’s life are her childhood and her married life (1819–61). After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, the biography becomes less appealing, owing to Victoria all but giving up on life. Her love for Albert was infinite, and I do admire her devotion.The parts that didn’t appeal to me were those that took me away from Victoria’s personal sphere. For instance, I didn’t like extended info about politics, or when there’re lengthy sections devoted to individuals like William Gladstone and Major-General Gordon. I like biographies to stay on topic.Despite finding the subjects discussed in the period 1862–1901 to be less engaging, I feel this book deserves five stars because of the material covering the early part of Victoria’s life, plus the author writes in an engaging way throughout.
    • 4/5
      Baird's meticulous biography of the Grandmother of Europe helps distinguish the woman from the legend, revealing Victoria to be just as complicatedly human as the rest of us while providing immersive context of Victoria's world, how it shaped her, and how she shaped it.
    • 5/5
      A balanced biography, blending the personal and public sides of Queen Victoria in an insightful and interesting way. Particularly useful, the book’s front matter helped its reader by including Victoria’s Family Tree, illustrated maps of the changing European landscape during Victoria’s reign, plus a cast of characters (of which there are many). The introduction by the author sets up the bio’s theme perfectly, disclosing that some parts of Victoria’s diaries, parts destroyed (burned and thought gone) when edited in 1943 by Victoria’s youngest daughter, Beatrice, had been--unbeknownst to the 86 years-old Beatrice— photographed and secreted away in the Royal Archives. By whom, still remains unknown. Other editors, Arthur Benson and Lord Esher, likewise, practiced a form of “historical censorship” while culling Queen Victoria’s correspondence. Putting aside those intriguing details, what makes this such a praiseworthy book is its skillful presentation of Victoria’s private life, from cradle to grave, and how her public reign of the United Kingdom merges with 19th Century history. After viewing three seasons of Victoria of Masterpiece Theater on PBS, I felt I wanted to know more. This well-researched account examines Victoria’s relationships, with her mother, her beloved prince/ husband, Albert, her feelings about motherhood and her children, while she was also dealing with the affairs of state, and her -- sometimes prickly-- prime ministers. Also explored, her over-powering grief after Albert’s death and Victoria’s late-in-life friendship with John Brown, revealing her burial wishes and a few prior unknown. Julia Baird, whose background is journalism, adroitly summarizes historical events and places them within the context of Queen Victoria’s life. It’s a piece of craftsmanship that helps boost the book’s pacing. So, even though I’ve admittedly only read one biography on Queen Victoria, this is the one I’m glad I decided on. I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
       A great book to understand the era.
    • 5/5
      Victoria was eighteen years when she ascended the throne of England at a time when women were considered property of their husbands and their sole purpose was to bare children. Raised by a loving, but ambitious mother, Victoria was a head strong child who learned how to get her way early in life. When she became queen, she relished the freedom she had and delayed marrying for as long as possible, but when she first met Prince Albert from Germany (a marriage arranged by her uncle, Leopold) she was smitten and fell madly in love. Albert also loved her deeply but was ambitious in his own right and of the belief that women were not able to govern. The marriage was a constant struggle between power yet remained deeply loving.Victoria gave birth to nine children at a time when childbirth was often dangerous. She was not particularly loving to them when they were infants, but Albert was a hands on and loving father. As they grew older, she became very involved in their upbringing and always wanted the best for each of them.This book is thick and heavy with almost a fourth dedicated to the notes of research. The author was able to actually research in the royal archives which provides much intimate, interesting, and personal stories of the Queen who was a voluminous writer. The death of Albert put her into mourning which lasted the rest of her life; however, her relationship with a Scottish servant, John Brown, meant a great deal to her and it was often assumed that they were more than friends. Her relationship with the Indian man, Abdul Karim known as the Munshi, was a great source of concern by her family so many of those records were destroyed.Victoria's relationship with the Prime Ministers of England varied in relationship with how much they were able to charm her. Disraeli was the master; Gladstone, on the other hand, was hostile and she in return did everything to keep him from power. This story is as readable as a novel, filled with interesting stories, and so well researched. The history of England through most of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution can be seen in this wonderful book. Highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Victoria the Queen is a wonderful book, if a very hefty read (it is brick-sized!). Baird has performed miracles with the royal archives, and courageously resisted their desire to control information even from sources outside their control.
      Having studied this period previously, there were sections with which I felt familiar, but there is also a wealth of information that was new. I think the evocation of Victoria as a young queen is masterly, though I didn't feel that I understood her quite as much as an older widow. She was (as many of us are) a mass of contradictions, shadows and highlights alternating almost unpredictably. It seems that there is less hope of triangulation of facts and details for Victoria's later life, probably due to the assiduous censoring by her family and editors.
      This is a master-work, and the best biography of Victoria that the general reader of our age is ever likely to meet. It is very well presented too; I only found two awkward expressions in the entire work, and I noticed them particularly because they are so rare (at one place, Victoria writes 'torrents of letters' twice in succession; in the other, she is described as a 'spiky muse' twice in one para).
      A great achievement.
    • 5/5
      **This book was reviewed for Manhattan and Seattle Book Reviews and via Netgalley**Drawing on sources previously unavailable, Baird gives us an intimate look at the Queen who defined and gave name to an entire era. I will admit, I am a huge fan of the Victorian Period from a historical/literary perspective, but for all that, I knew very little about the Queen herself.Victoria: The Queen is a monster of a book, at over five hundred pages. We follow the Queen-to-be from birth, through her long and illustrious life. Far from the dour and reclusive person that is the common perception, Victoria was a fiery, strong-willed woman with a stubborn streak a mile long. It was the continuing contention from the era previous, and down through the Victorian, that women were supposed to be meek and submit to the men in their lives. That Victoria ruled the greatest Empire of the time, and often refused to give in to the 'well-meaning’ men in her life speaks volumes to her character. I think she would have been wonderful to have met in person.Interspersed throughout are snippets from Victoria’s own journals, and historic notes of the times. I can empathise, across the ages, with Victoria’s frustrations and antagonistic relationship with her mother. My own has been rather similar. It was quite interesting to see the later parallels between Victoria's relationship with her mother, and her own later relationships with her own children. Via nature and nurture, for better or worse, Victoria shared many traits with her mother. The stubbornness for one, and a need for control that caused others to chafe at times. Victoria was lucky to find such a perfect balanced opposite in her husband, Prince Albert. Here’s another figure I knew very little about. He, too, seems a fascinating person. From his description, he seems more introverted than Victoria, prizing deep conversation to frivolity. Some of the more detailed historical notes of the times I just had to shake my head at, such as the notions surrounding pregnancy,birth, and women’s sexuality. There were plenty of 'wtf’ moments, to be sure. For a time of such 'enlightenment', the people of the times seem pretty dense when it came to a lot of things. While the Victorian Era will likely always fascinate me, would I want to live during this time? Absolutely not! Haha. I did find Baird's intimations that Albert shaped more of the era than most realise, and that, had circumstances played out differently, we may well have had an era named for him instead! Baird pulled no punches with this exhaustive biography, to be sure. We see Victoria and her best, and her worst, at her most regal, and her most human. She ascended the throne at a young age, and had need to mature as a monarch. Mistakes were made, some serious, such as the incident with Lady Flora, early in her reign. But from most mistakes, Victoria did learn and grow, leaving behind an enduring legacy. ????? Highly recommended, if you have an interest in the Victorian Era, Queen Victoria herself, or are a history buff in general.
    • 4/5
      I read this in preparation for watching the PBS series about Queen Victoria, and it did not disappoint. Victoria, along with her consort, Albert, defined an age in British history. Until Queen Elizabeth II, Victoria was the longest ruling British monarch. Baird shows us Victoria the passionate young girl and her crush on her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne; Victoria the wife of Albert and mother of 9 children, who came to rely on Albert for much of the daily business of running her realm; Victoria the grieving widow who eventually re-took the reins of power; and Victoria, a nation’s grandmother figure. She navigated her nation through a time of immense change in Europe and the world beyond, and in some ways her influence is still felt today.
    • 4/5
      This extensively researched biography landed in my “to read” pile at the same time the PBS series about Victoria was ready to begin. Naturally, differences in style and tone emerge, but the tv producers have hewn pretty close to the facts as established by historian Baird. Victoria was not the prudish, sexually repressed old lady we think of when we think “Victorian era.” That was Albert, actually. Victoria enjoyed her sex life and was disappointed when, after her ninth child was born, her doctor told her to have no more. She said something like, “What, no more fun in bed?” She became queen at eighteen and married at twenty-one. A youthful portrait, with a dash of the sultry, appears on the cover of Baird’s book. It’s the image of herself Victoria chose to bury with her husband.When she became Queen, she initially relied heavily on the counsel of Her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to whom she was greatly attached. He was a good mentor for Victoria, except in three areas, says Baird. He should have persuaded her to deal even-handedly with Britain’s political parties, not favoring one over another; he could have encouraged more concern for the poor; and he should have helped her repair relations with her mother. By the time of her marriage, this headstrong young woman was accustomed to being queen. Yet she was deeply attached to Albert, who chafed under his limited role in British affairs of state, and they struggled to find a useful place for him. Ultimately, he worked tirelessly for the benefit of her country and its evolution into a modern society. Had he not died young, the 1800s would have been called “the Albertine era,” Baird says. But Albert did die when he and the queen were in their early 40s, and she wore black for the rest of her life. Her template became, Baird says, “weep with the women and dictate to the men, all while cushioning herself with a dramatic large grief.”Victoria, too, worked hard. She wrote some 2,500 words a day—about 60 million words in her lifetime—letters, memoranda, diaries. Unfortunately, her voluminous papers were carefully “edited” by her family after her death. Daughter Beatrice, Victoria’s youngest child, who lived until 1944, took on the job of rewriting her mother’s diaries, turning the Queen’s interesting, quirky observations into dry prose, then burning the originals. Baird terms this “one of the greatest acts of historical censorship of the century.” Victoria is great-great-great-great-great grandmother to the children of England’s Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton. It’s hard to believe so many generations have passed when Victoria remains so vivid in our cultural memory, for reasons this book amply justifies.
    • 4/5
      A comprehensive review of Queen Victoria's life and reign. Well researched, this book helps a modern-day audience understand the 61-year reign of a woman of great contradictions.
    • 4/5
      To write this new biography of Queen Victoria, Baird got unprecedented access to Royal Archives. Victoria’s daughter, Beatrice, had been left with the job of expurgating Victoria’s journals and letters and she did quite a hatchet job on them, removing anything that might cause her mother to be seen in a less than perfect light. What she didn’t realize was that someone at the Archives took a photo of each page, preserving Victoria’s words. Baird was given access to this treasure trove. This allows us to see the dichotomy that Victoria lived with in more detail than in the past; women of her day were supposed to be meek and submissive, while she ruled the biggest empire England ever had. Wives were supposed to obey their husbands, but her husband was consort and prince only and not the king. Women were pretty much seen as being sexless, while Victoria had a strong libido and enjoyed having sex (the Victorian era’s extreme sexual modesty actually came from Prince Albert, not Victoria). Women were supposed to be natural mothers; she hated being pregnant and was ambivalent about children. She was the supreme ruler of the Empire, but didn’t believe women should be able to vote. Most of the book is, of course, nothing new. Her reign has been well documented already. Baird’s writing style leaves something to be desired- she will be writing about one subject, then take off on a tangent like a dog going “Squirrel!”. Some things are out of chronological order, which is confusing. But I found the book mostly very interesting (I really had little interest in the details of her dealings with Parliament), despite already knowing a fair bit about Victoria. Don’t expect anything earthshaking, but rather a portrait of a complex woman about whom many myths have been woven.
    • 4/5
      Book received from NetGalleyThis was a wonderful book about a very well-known, Queen of Britain. Victoria was a unique monarch who had quite a bit of tragedy in her life. Since she was so well-known it is difficult to find a biography with any new information on her. This one did have a bit, which is the main reason I gave it 4 stars. It is a wonderful read and I would have liked it even without the new material. It's very well written and researched, with a few items that could be considered speculation. I do not believe we will ever definitively know the true status of her manservant John Brown. I especially enjoyed it due to the fact I was able to tour her rooms in Kensington Palace, so I had a reference when they were discussing her life there.
    • 2/5
      I'm not quite sure what to think about this book. The writing style was pretty good, but the flow was awful. The author jumped back and forth in time, giving the reader only a portion of the picture. Victoria was 2 then 15 then 5 then 10, etc...which was really off putting. After a while, I just put the book down.
    • 5/5
      I recently reviewed another book on Queen Victoria. It was historical fiction by Daisy Goodwin. In the review I commented that I was left though with a hunger for more. Julia Baird's Victoria: The Queen satisfied that hunger. It was a very readable and enjoyable non-fiction that covers Victoria from birth to death.The book was extremely well researched but the research did not overpower the story at the hands of a very good author.

      Victoria was not supposed to be queen. There were several uncles and their possible children between her and the throne. By the time she was thirteen though, it was apparent that Victoria was the future queen of England. Until she inherited the throne and became queen, she was tightly controlled by her mother and her mother's Sevengali like employee, Sir John Conroy. They plan to control the throne by controlling Victoria. Best laid plans and all that.

      The book details how Victoria asserted her own authority, found her own advisers and eventually chose her own husband. One of the things I learned from the book is that the Victorian values owes more to her husband Prince Albert than to Victoria herself. She was less concerned about the moral fiber of her people than the day to day ruling of her people. Albert was the one who had extremely rigid morality.

      Ms. Baird also details Victoria's relationship with her children, her prime ministers and her foreign counterparts. As she marries her children off into other European and Russian royalty, she creates a large extended family with it's head sitting on the English throne. I really enjoyed the book. The details I craved after reading the historical fiction book were all found in Victoria: The Queen. It was wonderful to have every part of Victoria's life covered in one book. Before you watch PBS's new mini-series Victoria, read Ms. Baird's Victoria" The Queen so you can separate the fact from the fiction.

      I received Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.