Queen Victoria’s Reading in Mourning and Humorous Procrastinators: Linley Sambourne's Illustrated Letters

‘My Life as a happy one is ended!’: Queen Victoria’s Reading in Mourning

This paper is based upon a chapter of my thesis entitled 'Sorrows Manifold-Queen Victoria's reading in mourning’. It will focus on the reading of Queen Victoria in times of mourning, investigating reading materials that consoled and comforted the Queen as well as those which enabled her expression of grief, memorialised those she mourned and became part of her curated widowhood played out, as Adrienne Munich suggests, in ‘carefully staged scenes’. Though Queen Victoria reigned for forty of her sixty-three years on the throne dressed in black, defining nineteenth-century widowhood in the public consciousness, her mourning, though most potent when centred upon the loss of Albert, expanded beyond one death to include a great many losses. These events threw the Queen and the monarchy into crisis. I will examine how Victoria’s reading materials together with her journals and letters can give us insights into her mental state, religious ideals and sense of duty and allow us to assess how having a widow on the throne changed the world. My paper will explore various texts that the Queen read in times of sorrow from The Christian Keepsake (1836) to In Memoriam A.H.H (1850) and will include some exciting marginalia found in my research at Osborne House and The Royal Library, Windsor Castle for which I gratefully received a BAVS grant.

Hannah Burden is a University of Leicester BA English and MA Victorian Studies graduate. She is nearing the end of the third year of her PhD, supervised by Dr. Julian North and Dr. James Moore, researching “The Literary Consumption and Contribution of Queen Victoria”. Her thesis includes chapters on the Royal Library and the Queen’s reading of female authors in female company as well as Victoria’s reading in mourning on which this paper is based. Hannah’s research has taken her to some interesting places and allowed her to uncover previously unstudied marginalia in Queen Victoria’s personal books. Hannah was pleased to give a version of this paper at the Gladstone’s Library hub of this year’s British Association of Victorian Studies Flightless Conference.

Humorous Procrastinators: Linley Sambourne's Illustrated Letters

In 1871, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) was inducted into the self-described Punch Brotherhood as Junior Cartoonist. With minimal training in illustration, and difficulties with procrastination (Ormond, 2010), Sambourne faced stiff competition from highly trained artists including Harry Furniss and George du Maurier who consistently delivered high quality illustrations. Despite this, Sambourne was promoted to Chief Cartoonist on Sir John Tenniel’s retirement in 1901 (MC&LGA, 1901).

This paper will consider Sambourne’s use of humorously illustrated letters to retain a good reputation with Bradbury & Agnew, Punch’s proprietors, in order to maintain and elevate his professional status. In doing so, it also explores methods used by workers of the comic periodical press to remain memorable to, and respected by, their colleagues and employers.

Elliot Andrews is a Midlands4Cities-funded PHD student under the supervision of Dr. Claire Wood and Dr. James Moore. His doctoral project, "Mapping the Punch Brotherhood: Methodological Approaches to Networking and Collaboration (1841-1900)" considers the use of networking in Punch’s self-described literary brotherhood, utilising digital and close-reading methods to bring forward new information about the inner workings of the periodical, and its role in Victorian England’s wider literary sphere.