Public-domain ebook
Language: en1,431 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: History - British·History - Modern (1750+)·History - Royalty
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #42386.
Sir Herbert Maxwell’s Sixty Years a Queen offers a sweeping, chronologically organized portrait of Queen Victoria’s reign, from the moment of William IV’s death in 1837 through the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 1897. The work opens with a practical note on its many illustrations, each caption marked by attributions in curly braces, and a prefatory statement that the author has deliberately chosen “salient points” over a dry chronicle. From the outset the reader is guided by a detailed table of contents that divides the narrative into numbered chapters, each covering political, military and social developments such as the early railways, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the rise of universal education. The author’s aim is to link these events to the era’s technological progress and the expanding literacy of the British public.
Written in the formal, expository style of late‑Victorian historiography, the text combines factual enumeration with occasional moral commentary, reflecting Maxwell’s background as a parliamentarian and his concern for the nation’s character. Its dense, chapter‑by‑chapter layout and extensive footnotes will appeal to readers who enjoy comprehensive reference works, scholars of 19th‑century British politics, and anyone interested in how a single monarch’s sixty‑year tenure intersected with the rapid industrial, imperial and cultural transformations of the age.
The opening · free to read
Many of the images in the book have multi-line captions, and the first line of most of them contains attributions (credits) set off by unpaired curly braces. For example, J. A. Vinter.} {National Portrait Gallery. SIR ROWLAND HILL under a portrait tells us the the portrait of Sir Rowland Hill was by J. A. Vinter and hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Some illustrations have only an artist or only a location.
Sidenotes have been repositioned to immediately precede the paragraphs in which they occurred.
Inverted asterisms are indicated by three asterisks ***.
Table of Contents added by transcriber.
SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN.
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