Literature
In 1937 Lord Chamberlain the Earl of Cromer ruled that no British sovereign may be portrayed on the British stage until 100 years after his or her accession. For this reason, Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina (1935), which had earlier appeared at the Gate Theatre Studio in London with Pamela Stanley in the title role, could not have its British premiere until the centenary of Queen Victoria's accession, 20 June 1937. This was a Sunday, so the new premiere took place the next day, at the Lyric Theatre. Pamela Stanley reprised the title role at Housman's request, and Carl Esmond played Prince Albert. The play later appeared on Broadway, where Helen Hayes portrayed the Queen, with Vincent Price in the role of Prince Albert.
A 'Royal Diaries' book was written, documenting her childhood between 1829 and 1830: Victoria, May Blossom of Britannia by Anna Kirwan.
The Victorian age is experienced through the eyes of the fictional Morland family in The Abyss, The Hidden Shore, The Winter Journey, The Outcast, The Mirage, The Cause, The Homecoming and The Question, Volumes 18–25 respectively of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. One of the characters becomes Victoria's devoted lady-in-waiting.
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles also wrote I Victoria, a fictional autobiography of Queen Victoria.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Depictions Of Queen Victoria
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)