Synopsis
A fatherless girl grows up in a virtual prisoner in the shabby backwater of Kensington Palace, despised by her royal relations, bullied and insulted by her foolish mother's evil genius. Only the core of stubbornness in her character sustains her as she waits for the day of deliverance - the day she will become Queen of England. She is Victoria, this is her story, recorded in her own words during the last troubled year of her life. With humanity and humor the Queen Empress of half the world looks back over eighty crowded years, remembering domestic crisis and public triumph, revolution, war, and the fall of dynasties; remembering most of all the great and abiding love that illuminated every aspect of her life. I, Victoria is the autobiography Queen Victoria might have written. Here Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, author of the award-winning Kirov trilogy, combines first-rate scholarship and brilliant storytelling to reveal the private woman behind the public mask. It is a personalized journey across eighty of the most fascinating years of the nineteenth century, seen through the eyes of one of its most prominent leaders - a quick-tempered, proud, and incurably honest woman.
Library Journal
Harrod-Eagles (Grave Music, LJ 3/1/95), who also writes as Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennett, has written 40-plus titles in the fields of romance and mystery. Her latest effort is a fictionalized autobiography of Queen Victoria. The fictional Victoria, writing during her last year, looks back to her childhood and onward to the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Each chapter also includes a bit about her present, largely tidbits about children, grandchildren, and contemporary political situations. The real Victoria was such a prolific letter and journal writer that much exists even today about her personal life. Unfortunately, I, Victoria doesn't break any new ground and the constant political references may discourage readers wanting a portrait of the queen as a woman, wife, and mother. Only large fiction collections need consider.-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights