Victoria
Victoria

Author: Catherine Reef

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0544716140

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A captivating biography about Queen Victoria (1819-1901), one of England's most fascinating royals. Her long reign was filled with drama, death, intrigue, and passion, and took place during a time of great transformation, an era that bears her name--the Victorian period. Full color. 8 x 10.

Victorian Murderesses
Victorian Murderesses

Author: Debbie Blake

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2022-12-02

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1399094548

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The Victorian belief that women were the ‘weaker sex’ who were expected to devote themselves entirely to family life, made it almost inconceivable that they could ever be capable of committing murder. What drove a woman to murder her husband, lover or even her own child? Were they tragic, mad or just plain evil? Using various sources including court records, newspaper accounts and letters, this book explores some of the most notorious murder cases committed by seven women in nineteenth century Britain and America. It delves into each of the women’s lives, the circumstances that led to their crimes, their committal and trial and the various reasons why they resorted to murder: the fear of destitution led Mary Ann Brough to murder her own children; desperation to keep her job drove Sarah Drake to her crime. Money was the motive in the case of Mary Ann Cotton, who is believed to have poisoned as many as twenty-one people. Kate Bender lured her unsuspecting victims to their death in ‘The Slaughter Pen’ before stripping them of their valuables; Kate Webster’s temper got the better of her when she brutally murdered and decapitated her employer; nurse Jane Toppan admitted she derived sexual pleasure from watching her victims die slowly and Lizzie Borden was suspected of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe, so that she could live on the affluent area known as ‘the hill’ in Fall River, Massachusetts.

The Royal Throne of Mercy and British Culture in the Victorian Age
The Royal Throne of Mercy and British Culture in the Victorian Age

Author: James Gregory

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-10-01

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 135014245X

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In the first detailed study of its kind, James Gregory's book takes a historical approach to mercy by focusing on widespread and varied discussions about the quality, virtue or feeling of mercy in the British world during Victoria's reign. Gregory covers an impressive range of themes from the gendered discourses of 'emotional' appeal surrounding Queen Victoria to the exercise and withholding of royal mercy in the wake of colonial rebellion throughout the British empire. Against the backdrop of major events and their historical significance, a masterful synthesis of rich source material is analysed, including visual depictions (paintings and cartoons in periodicals and popular literature) and literary ones (in sermons, novels, plays and poetry). Gregory's sophisticated analysis of the multiple meanings, uses and operations of royal mercy duly emphasise its significance as a major theme in British cultural history during the 'long 19th century'. This will be essential reading for those interested in the history of mercy, the history of gender, British social and cultural history and the legacy of Queen Victoria's reign.

Age of Assassins
Age of Assassins

Author: Michael Newton

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2012-10-16

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 0571290469

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These were the crimes that were meant to change the world, and sometimes did. The book connects the killing of the Kennedys or the murder that sparked the First World War with less well-known stories, such as the Berlin shooting of an instigator of the Armenian genocide or the attack on an American 'robber baron'. Taking in Malcolm X and Queen Victoria, Adolf Hitler and Andy Warhol, Charles Manson and Emma Goldman, Tsars, Presidents, and pop stars, Age of Assassins traces the process that turned thought into action and murder into an icon. In tackling the history of political violence, the book is unique in its range and attention to detail, summoning up an age of assassination that is far from over.

The Contentious Crown
The Contentious Crown

Author: Richard Williams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-23

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0429802315

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First published in 1997, The Contentious Crown is a study of comment on the monarchy in Victorian newspapers, journals, pamphlets and parliamentary debates. It examines radical and republican criticism, reverence and sentimentality, perceptions of the Crown’s political role, the relationship between the monarchy and patriotism and attitudes to royal ceremonial. Williams shows that discussion of the monarchy throughout the reign was of a far greater volume and complexity than has hitherto been realized. Two strands of discussion, one critical, one reverential, co-existed from Victoria’s accession to her death. Criticism was overwhelmed by reverence by the 1880s since the Crown’s most controversial features, especially its political influence and foreignness, were seen to have receded, allowing the monarchy and Royal Family to appear in their ceremonial, domestic and philanthropic roles as the ideal family and the figurehead of the nation and Empire. The book gives a historical context to the current problems of the British monarchy by showing that controversy and debate are by no means novel and that the secure position achieved in the late nineteenth century was the product of circumstances which no longer exist.

Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations
Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations

Author: Matthias Range

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-08-23

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1139560999

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Coronations are the grandest of all state occasions. This is the first comprehensive in-depth study of the music that was performed at British coronations from 1603 to the present, encompassing the sixteen coronations that have taken place in Westminster Abbey and the last two Scottish coronations. Range describes how music played a crucial role at the coronations and how the practical requirements of the ceremonial proceedings affected its structure and performance. The programme of music at each coronation is reconstructed, accompanied by a wealth of transcriptions of newly discovered primary source material, revealing findings that lead to fresh conclusions about performance practices. The coronation ceremonies are placed in their historical context, including the political background and the concept of invented traditions. The study is an invaluable resource not only for musicologists and historians, but also for performers, providing a fascinating insight into the greatest of all Royal events.