This June the Royal Collection Trust will publish an illustrated children's story, written by Queen Victoria when she was just 10 years old. Local author Jacqueline Wilson is set to write the foreword, explains Charles Raspin
Queen Victoria, at the age she would have written the Adventures of Alice Lacelles
It was a lonely childhood for a young Alexandrina Victoria. Confined within the walls of Kensington Palace, she had few friends her own age, all of whom were subject to the ebb and flow of courtly politics. Even her own family could spend little time with her, focused on their own missions of diplomacy or governance.
It was Victoria's imagination that provided her with playmates. A devoted writer who faithfully kept a diary from her early teenage years, she produced a children's story of her own as part of an English composition exercise at age 10 (and, she carefully notes, 3/4s). Now, some 85 years after it was first written, the Royal Collection Trust will publish it.
In The Adventures of Alice Laselles a lovely, lonely young girl is sent away to a boarding school by her wicked step-mother, only to discover friends of all sorts and a kind, wise headmistress.
It might be obvious wish-fulfilment - but that's what great children's stories are made of.
Prolific Surrey author Jacqueline Wilson certainly thinks so. She's written the foreword for the book, which is to be published June 8, where she calls the story "delightful".
"If Victoria hadn’t been destined to be Queen I think she might have made a remarkable novelist."
To find out more about the book, or order it online, visit the Royal Collection Trust website
