The girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same: vitality, conscientiousness, pride, and simplicity were hers to the latest hour.

A remarkably fresh and engaging account of Britain’s long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne at eighteen, in 1837, and died in 1901. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. The portraits he draws of Victoria’s husband, Albert, her family members, and the procession of Prime Ministers, beginning with her beloved Lord M, are vivid and trenchant.

Written only twenty years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era.