Volume 4, Number 3 · March 11, 1965
A Curious Queen
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
Queen Victoria
by Elizabeth Longford
Harper & Row, 635 pp., $8.50
Very few biographies which have reached the public in recent years can have as good a claim to be called 'definitive' as has Elizabeth Longford's life of Queen Victoria, and this for several reasons. A biography, to be regarded as definitive, must be based on plentiful materials and very few lives could have been so abundantly documented as that of Queen Victoria. The Queen was an object of intense interest to herself and knew herself to be also of intense interest to her family, her subjects, her contemporaries, and posterity. Like so many of her contemporaries she loved writing as a form of activity and her letters and journals—the main sources of this biography—constitute an extraordinarily full record of her views, her actions and above all her feelings from day to day. The spontaneity of her writing is unmistakable; although she was consciously writing for posterity as well as for the day, she was so confident that posterity would agree with her about everything that this consideration did not inhibit her as it has inhibited other diarists. Other biographers—notably Lytton Strachey—have of course made use of much of this material, but Lady Longford seems to be the first to have been granted full access to all that is now preserved. As she says 'a complete portrait of Queen Victoria was never possible without recourse to the copious material in the royal archives at Windsor Castle. By gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen I have been given unhindered access to all the relevant papers.'
Review, 1901 words
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