Queen Victoria - First Media Monarch

by John Plunkett

John Plunkett presents the first history of the interaction between the monarchy and the media to focus on the reign of Queen Victoria. He argues that the development of popular print and visual media in the nineteenth century helped to reinvent the position of the monarchy in national life, and includes a detailed account of the emergence of royal journalism and the impact of new media such as photography.

270 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2003

Reviews

[Dagmar1927 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was sorely disappointed by this book. I'd read an extract on Google books and decided that it was worth the amount I payed for it on Amazon. However, upon reading the rest of it, I found it extremely tedious and not at all what I was expecting. I suppose it did what it said on the tin, in that it analysed the relationship between Queen Victoria and the media, but it did so in such a dry way that I almost gave up reading it several times.

In the end, though, I finished it and realised that I should probably have stuck to Google books and saved my money. Even the photographs I knew were included, but could not see until I purchased it, were sadly disappointing, as they were famous images, but not discussed in a way that I had not seen before.

Hopefully someone will now take the subject and make it more interesting, as the subject was admittedly interesting as a concept.