Queen Victoria's central importance to the era defined by her reign is self-evident, and yet it has been surprisingly overlooked in the study of Victorian culture. This collection of essays goes beyond the facts of biography and official history to explore the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, meanings she held for her subjects around the world and even for those outside her empire, who made of her a multifaceted icon serving their social and economic needs. In her paradoxical position as neither consort nor king, she baffled expectations throughout her reign. She was a model of wifely decorum and solid middle-class values, but she also became the focus of anxieties about powerful women, and - increasingly - of anger about Britain's imperial aims. Each essay analyses a different aspect of this complex and fascinating figure. Contributors include noted scholars in the field of literature, cultural studies, art history, and women's studies.

Part biography, part historical and cultural study, this richly illustrated volume uncovers in fascinating detail the childhood that Princess Victoria actually lived. Vallone shows readers a new Victoria--a lively and passionate girl very different from the iconic, dour widow of the queen's later life. 50 illustrations, 15 in color.

"Inspired by existential thought, but using ethnographic methods, Michael Jackson explores a variety of contemporary topics, including 9/11, episodes from the war in Sierra Leone and its aftermath, the marginalization of indigenous Australians, the application of new technologies, mundane forms of ritualization, the magical use of language, the sociality of violence, the prose of suffering, and the discourse of human rights. Throughout this compelling work, Jackson demonstrates that existentialism, far from being a philosophy of individual being, enables us to explore issues of social existence and coexistence in new ways, and to theorise events as the sites of a dynamic interplay between the finite possibilities of the situations in which human beings find themselves and the capacities they possess for creating viable forms of social life."--BOOK JACKET.

This study is the first treatment devoted to Sir Arthur Helps (1813–1875), who was a prominent figure in the mid-Victorian world. Readers will discover that from the 1840s until his death, Helps was influential and well-known to many key figures: Carlyle, Ruskin, Froude and the Queen were among those whom he befriended. In fact, it was almost certainly these relationships which Helps sought to protect by directing that the bulk of his private papers and correspondence be destroyed upon his death. Making use of extensive primary and secondary sources, this book begins the process of recovering this once eminent Victorian. Helps did become a forgotten figure, but, nevertheless, during the course of his career he made notable impacts upon many areas of British life. At once a social activist and literary figure, Helps labored to promote social reform while also lifting his pen to educate his readers about the complexity of both societal problems and the difficulties inherent in adequately addressing them. He looked well beyond Britain as well: it would be Helps who authored a four volume history of the Spanish conquest of the New World, while developing unrivaled expertise on the history and practice of slavery in the Americas. As Clerk of the Privy Council, Helps played a decisive role in addressing the problems caused by the ‘Cattle Plague’ which shocked Britain in the middle of the 1860s. Most important, perhaps, it would be as Clerk that Helps served Queen Victoria not only as an informal confidant, but by making decisions which refashioned the monarchy’s public image. The book, then, reintroduces Helps by documenting and assessing his contributions to Victorian Britain.

Queen Victoria is Britain's queen of contradictions. In her combination of deep sentimentality and bombast; cultural imperialism and imperial compassion; fear of intellectualism and excitement at technology; romanticism and prudishness, she became a spirit of the age to which she gave her name. Victoria embraced photography, railway travel and modern art; she resisted compulsory education for the working classes, recommended for a leading women's rights campaigner ‘a good whipping' and detested smoking. She may or may not have been amused. Meanwhile she reinvented the monarchy and wrestled with personal reinvention. She lived in the shadow of her mother and then under the tutelage of her husband; finally she embraced self-reliance during her long widowhood. Fresh, witty and accessible, Matthew Dennison's Queen Victoria is a compelling assessment of Victoria's mercurial character and impact, written with the irony, flourish and insight that this Queen and her rule so richly deserve.

"The Spiritual Lives series features biographies of prominent men and women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically religious contribution. Each volume provides a general account of the figure's life and thought, while giving special attention to his or her religious contexts, convictions, doubts, objections, ideas, and actions. Many leading politicians, writers, musicians, philosophers, and scientists have engaged deeply with religion in significant and resonant ways that have often been overlooked or underexplored. Some of the volumes will even focus on men and women who were lifelong unbelievers, attending to how they navigated and resisted religious questions, assumptions, and settings. The books in this series will therefore recast important figures in fresh and thought-provoking ways"--