Beloved and Darling Child

This is a selection from the private correspondence between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter, Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia and subsequently German Empress and the mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Mixing politics with domesticity, the letters have been selected to make a continuous narrative of events from the Bulgarian crisis of 1886 to the South African War of 1900, against the background of the correspondents' daily lives. The selection covers the years between 1886 and 1901 and concentrates on the daily lives of the two women, on the political events of the day and on their reactions of subjects as diverse as the assassination of Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the character of Bismarck, the pleasures of shopping, the Dreyfus affair, and endless royal betrothals, weddings, births and funerals. Available for the first time in paperback, the volume includes an informative introduction and notes, as well as a list of the family names encountered in the letters, including familiar names.