Product Description

From acclaimed biographer Flora Fraser, a brilliant group biography of the six daughters of “Mad” King George III.
Fraser takes us into the heart of the British royal family during the tumultuous period of the American and French revolutions and beyond, illuminating the complicated lives of these exceptional women: Princess Royal, the eldest, constantly at odds with her mother; home-loving, family-minded Augusta; plump Elizabeth, a gifted amateur artist; Mary, the bland beauty of the family; Sophia, emotional and prone to take refuge in illness; and Amelia, “the most turbulent and tempestuous of all the Princesses.” Weaving together letters and historical accounts, Fraser re-creates their world in all its frustrations and excitements.

The six sisters, though handsome, accomplished and extremely well educated, were kept from marrying by George III, and Fraser describes how they remained subject to their father for many years, while he teetered on the brink of mental collapse. The King may have believed that his six daughters were happy to live celibately at Windsor, but secretly, as Fraser’s absorbing narrative of royal repression and sexual license shows, the sisters enjoyed startling freedom. Several of them, torn between love for their ailing father and longing for independence, forged their own scandalous and subversive lives within the castle walls. With a discerning eye for psychological detail and a keen feminist sensibility, Fraser delves into these clandestine love affairs, revealing the truth about Sophia’s illegitimate baby; examining Amelia's intimate correspondence with her soldier-lover; and investigating the eventual marriages of Princesses Royal, Elizabeth and Mary.

Never before has the historical searchlight been turned with such sympathy and acuity on George III and his family. With unparalleled access to royal and private family papers, Flora Fraser has created a revelatory portrait of six fascinating women and their place in history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #581463 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-05
• Released on: 2005-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
King George III of England (1760–1820) and his queen, Charlotte, had 15 children, among them six daughters, on whom Fraser (The Unruly Queen) focuses her family portrait. She depicts royals who attempted to live a rather homey life, but were torn both by the king's famous madness and by complex political and affectionate alliances within the family itself. Fraser has a great source that she uses extensively: the prolific and elegant letters of Charlotte and her daughters. Their correspondence reveals personalities and daily details that attach the reader to their lives. The letters are at times less informative than suggestive; over-reliance on them contributes a wandering quality to the narrative and too many precious tidbits that Fraser apparently couldn't bear to leave out. She also tends to set up situations that take too long to play out, the most significant being the onset of George's madness. The madness, though, is at the center of the women's lives: it not only helped weaken the monarchy further, it wrecked a happy marriage, created rifts out of family tensions and contributed to only three of George's talented daughters marrying, and then too late in life to have children, while two others triggered scandal with their affairs. It's a sad and fascinating story. 24 pages of color illus. Agent, Jonathan Lloyd.(Apr. 8)

From Booklist
Henry VIII had six wives, but George III had as many daughters, and the half-dozen female offspring of that long-reigning and ever-productive king (who also fathered nine sons) are the collective subject of this greatly involving biography by the author of The Unruly Queen (1996), a well-respected chronicle of George III's daughter-in-law, Queen Caroline. The reader may find it difficult at first to keep straight all the princesses, their names, their individual personalities, and their place in the lineup of siblings but soon will comfortably ease into Fraser's expansive, leisurely, but certainly not dawdling narrative, which opens into a rich tapestry of sheltered lives and parental restrictions. Fraser, in her immaculately professional manner, gives ample evidence of how the king's possessiveness toward his daughters, as well as the effect of his disastrous physical and mental breakdown on not only the country but also the royal household, channeled each of the six princesses into "subversive behavior and even acts of desperation." Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“A rich and richly hued Regency tale. . . . Fraser is splendidly at home in the 18th century.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Remarkably intimate. . . . Full and revealing. . . . Princesses opens an invaluable new window into the often troubled private world of these royal women.”
–Los Angeles Times

“Riveting and wonderfully detailed. . . . Thanks to Flora Fraser’s new book, George III’s daughters can step out of the shadows of history and take their rightful places with the rest of the House of Hanover.”
–The Washington Times

“Memorable. . . . Compelling and poignant. . . . With elegant felicity, Fraser paints a picture out of Jane Austen.” –Vogue


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

Interesting subject, difficult reading
The six daughters of King George III have been overlooked by biographers for too many years. Therefore I had high hopes for Princesses. Unfortunately it was one of the most difficult biographies I have ever read. Flora Fraser painstakingly read and researched hundreds of existing letters written by the princesses as well as others involved in their lives, and it seems she made use of each and every one of them - to the point of annoyance. To borrow a line from Shakespeare, Fraser needs to be told "More matter with less art". The writing is dense, arty, and agonisingly slow to read, and too many pages are spent rehashing insignificant details. These pages would have gone to better use going into more depth about the personalities, characters, and personal relationships of the women. For all that, the subject of the princesses' lives is piquant, moving, joyful, and tragic. But is it worth such headache and laborious reading?

Very Indept Biography
This was a very detailed and indept biography of the six daughters of George III. Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia they were not allowed to marry an unusual step at the time since most kings marry off their daughters for alliences George III decided not to marry his daughters off after witnessing one of his own sister's plight in marriage. Yet that didn't deter them from flirting, illegally marrying or in Sophia's case even giving birth to an illigmate child creating scandles of their own. It was interesting reading about their interests and charities and living with their parents through middle age. Two sisters did end up marrying after well into middle age. A very good bio.

Not bad but theres nothing really to tell...
In my opinion this is one of those books that it is well researched,well organized and the story is pretty much well told.But at the end of the day i asked myself why i bought this book, because when i finished reading the book i realized that the lives of these ladies wasnt interesting at all.I mean the thing is that, basically, nothing happened to this ladies.They were completely separated from the outside world and they really didnt had that much to contribute or much to get involved with the world.The narrative is not bad because the author makes a great effort in trying to make the story interesting.The problem is that the story is boring and dull.The author also just takes too many pages to tell a story that doesnt need that many pages.I've could have done without a least 100 to a 150 pages.The only parts that were interesting were the ones that talked about the English etiquette in Court.I got to learn a lot about what's the etiquette when someone died and the proper order in which to enter a room or signed a document.Again good effort by the author but there's no story to tell