This is the definitive biography of Britain’s greatest monarch, who “was hailed at once as the mother of her people and as the embodied symbol of their imperial greatness.” “One of the surpassingly beautiful prose achievements of our time” (Chicago Daily News). Index; illustrations. No other biography, before or since, gives as delightful and comprehensive an account of Queen Victoria and her reign. Here is the full panorama of Victoria's life--her childhood, her marriage to Albert, and her majestic domination of a colorful court circle--told with the author's now-famous flair for throwing 'a sudden revealing searchlight into the obscure recesses, hitherto undivined.'Hailed by critics as a brilliant new kind of biography, Queen Victoria stands as one of the literary landmarks of this century. Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), among the most famous writers of his time, was a member of the Bloomsbury group and the author of a number of biographies. His Eminent Victorians, published in 1918, inaugurated a new style of biography distinguished by irony, wit, irreverence, and elegance of language. He is also the author of Elizabeth and Essex, Biographical Essays, and Literary Essays.