The Importance of Being Edward: King in Waiting, 1841-1901

by Stanley Weintraub

Biographer of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Stanley Wientraub employs previously little-used or unknown diaries, letters, memoirs and reportage from both sides of the Atlantic to throw fresh light on Edward VII's half-century of waiting to become King. The book provides a picture of the Prince and his his difficult and frustrating childhood, his introductions to gentlemanly sins at Oxford and Cambridge, and his chilly arranged marriage to the pretty but dull Princess Alexandra, from whom he frenetically escaped in a succession of balls, races, spas, gambling, carousing and whoring.

Genres: History

Hardcover

First published October 12, 2000

About the author

Weintraub was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 1929. He was the eldest child of Benjamin and Ray Segal Weintraub. He attended South Philadelphia High School, and then he attended West Chester State Teachers College (now West Chester University of Pennsylvania) where he received his B.S. in education in 1949. He continued his education at Temple University where he received his master's degree in English “in absentia,” as he was called to duty in the Korean War.

He received a commission as Army Second Lieutenant, and served with the Eighth Army in Korea receiving a Bronze Star.

After the War, he enrolled at Pennsylvania State University in September 1953; his doctoral dissertation “Bernard Shaw, Novelist” was accepted on May 6, 1956.

Except for visiting appointments, he remained at Penn State for all of his career, finally attaining the rank of Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities, with emeritus status on retirement in 2000. From 1970 to 1990 he was also Director of Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies

Reviews

[Susan Grimshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it in two instalments as I had to get through some borrowed books in the middle. It is an interesting and informative biography of Edward VII as Prince of Wales, who lived most of his life being kept under by Queen Victoria, yet his short reign is remembered with affection as the Edwardian Era.