Queen Victorias Mysterious Daughter, Lucinda Hawksley
Queen Victorias Mysterious Daughter, Lucinda Hawksley
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Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter
A Biography of Princess Louise

Author: Lucinda Hawksley

Narrator: Jennifer M. Dixon

Unabridged: 16 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/12/2018


Synopsis

Spirited and lively, Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals, and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.

The secrets of Queen Victoria's sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.

Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother's controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers—especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the "masculine" art of sculpture and go to art college—and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school.

The rumors of Louise's colorful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included entanglements with her sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and possibly even her sister Princess Beatrice's handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family, since the sixteenth century, to marry a commoner. She moved with him to Canada when he was appointed Governor-General.

About Lucinda Hawksley

Lucinda Hawksley is a writer and lecturer on art history and nineteenth-century history. She has written biographies of the pre-Raphaelite muse Lizzie Siddal (Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel), Charles Dickens (Charles Dickens), and Katey, one of Dickens's children (Charles Dickens' Favorite Daughter). She is the great, great, great granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens and is a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jan Mc on October 03, 2019

Queen Victoria had nine children (who all looked exactly alike, btw) between 1841 and 1857, although she was frightened of childbirth and didn't like children. And she wasn't a very good mother... Go figure. This is an interesting and well-written biography of Princess Louise, the sixth child and fo......more

Goodreads review by Biblio on October 04, 2015

The mystery of Princess Louise is that the Royal Archives and other usual repositories of letters, diaries, and other documents, have locked up the papers of Louise. Normally papers of this sort are available for biographers and scholars to examine on request, so why the big secrecy? Not to be thwar......more

Goodreads review by Beth on October 13, 2015

Like many, I find myself intrigued by royalty. Any royalty, really - but particularly in England, So the premise of this book, about a daughter of Queen Victoria who seems to have been somewhat erased from history, was definitely of interest. Knowing how the royals are covered these days, and how pr......more

Goodreads review by Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) on August 07, 2018

While the first quarter of this book flew quickly by, it soon began to drag. I put it down repeatedly and read several books before I managed to finish it, and by the end I was skimming. Part of that is due to the poor editing and misused language. Whole sections are repetitive, an there is some ver......more

Goodreads review by Jaclyn on October 20, 2015

I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Princess Louise was the sixth of Queen Victoria's nine children and, as it turns out, a rather interesting person. Lucinda Hawksley does a lovely job of taking readers through the life of the Princess, from her stifling childhood under the wing of he......more