Sixty Years a Queen: The Story of Her Majesty's Reign

Maxwell, Herbert, Sir, 1845-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
731K words
Chapters
74

Tags

English Originals World HistoryHistorical Figures Portrait GalleryRise and FallEnglish MonarchKingship NarrativeCelebration TraditionSocial ObservationVictorian Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Sixty Years a Queen: The Story of Her Majesty's Reign by Sir Herbert MaxwellAuthor: Maxwell, Herbert, Sir, 1845-1937,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Mar 22, 2013

Editor's review

Written by Sir Herbert Maxwell, this book takes Queen Victoria’s sixty-year reign as its narrative thread and reviews the changes in British politics, society, and imperial affairs during that period. The author lived through much of it, and his account carries an eyewitness perspective and the tone of the era; his sketches of parliamentary politics, important figures, and major events are relatively concrete, making the book an introductory historical reader for understanding Victorian Britain. Note that the book was written in that era itself, and its stance and wording bear clear marks of the time; its account of issues such as imperial expansion may not accord with today’s views, and readers should read with a critical eye. As a reset edition of a public-domain e-book, it is better used as source reading or in comparison with modern works on British history than as a sole authority. Readers interested in Victorian social life and the workings of constitutional monarchy will find many vivid details.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents first to grasp the sixty-year timeline, then select chapters by theme.
  2. Note the author’s eyewitness stance and distinguish narrative from evaluation.
  3. Compare with a modern work on British history to correct facts and views.
  4. Stay critical on imperial and colonial issues; do not treat the book’s wording as settled fact.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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  30. 30
  31. 31
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  40. 40
  41. 41
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  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
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  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
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  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74

FAQ

Is this a biography of Queen Victoria written by a modern scholar? No. The author, Sir Herbert Maxwell, was a British writer and politician of Victoria’s own time. The book narrates sixty years of British history during the Queen’s reign from an eyewitness perspective and carries clear period stances; it differs from modern academic biographies in both method and viewpoint.
Does the book focus mainly on the Queen’s personal life or on national history? On national history. Although the title uses the Queen’s reign as its thread, the content centers on British political events, important figures, and social changes during those sixty years; the Queen’s private life is not the book’s main subject.
What if the English original is hard to read? Begin with the table of contents and the opening paragraphs of chapters to grasp the outline, then read closely the chapters that interest you. For long sentences, first identify subject and verb; use reference works for personal and place names. Reading alongside a Chinese-language book on British history can also lower the barrier.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Maxwell, Herbert, Sir, 1845-1937 Author · British · 1845–1937

Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845–1937) was a Scottish lawyer, politician and writer. Public information about his early education and specific public offices is limited, so these cannot be described in detail. Two of his works are held in this Chinese-language collection, spanning nature and history: Trees: A Woodland Notebook, which records observations of trees and woodland in an informal, essay-like style, and Sixty Years a Queen: The Story of Her Majesty's Reign, a narrative of Queen Victoria's sixty-year reign. He also wrote works on Scottish history and gardening. His writing combines a lawyer's precision with a naturalist's ease, leaving readable pieces for later readers in the fields of gardening and local history.