AustLit

'When Queen Victoria died in 1901, two literary gentlemen took on a monumental task: selecting and editing her vast correspondence. The book they produced would influence perceptions of Victoria for generations to come – but it was not the full story.

The Queen's two editors, Baron Esher and Arthur Benson, were deeply eccentric men. Both graduates of Eton, they moved in a world of gentlemen's clubs, passionate male relationships and hidden political networks. Benson, a schoolmaster and author, suffered badly from depression. Esher was a shrewd and ambitious politician, a powerful puller of royal strings – and wrote incestuous letters to his son. Together, they would decide how the Queen was remembered.

Based on unprecedented access to the royal archives, Unsuitable for Publication reveals how key aspects of Victoria's life were deemed unfit for public consumption: her experience of motherhood, her struggle to combine the roles of ruler and wife, and her intimate friendships with other royal European women. Yvonne Ward reveals how and why these excisions were made and how they have skewed our image of Victoria ever since.' (Publisher's blurb)