It is, as Lord Melbourne hinted to Queen Victoria, ‘a little curious that so many good-looking children should have been born of the union between George III and Queen Charlotte.’ His florid youthful comeliness soon passed, leaving him with protuberant eyes and pendulous lips, and even the Queen's best friends could not describe her as anything but plain. Yet these two found themselves in course of time surrounded by a family of seven sons and six daughters all of whom were, at least in their earlier years, more than passably handsome.This study by the noted biographer Dorothy Margaret Stuart was the first full length account of the six princesses. Fanny Burney exclaimed, with characteristic fervour, ‘Never in tale or fable were six sister princesses more lovely!’ and a visitor from America wrote in 1788, ‘The four eldest princesses are thought surprising beauties. They are certainly handsome’ When Gainsborough was painting the series of family portraits he spoke with rapture of the royal children.The six Princesses were so spaced in order of time that they tended to fall into two equal groups: the elder Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Princess Royal, born in 1766; Augusta Sophia, born in 1768; Elizabeth, born in 1770: and the younger—Mary, born in 1776; Sophia, born in 1777; and Amelia, born in 1783.This biography provides a full account of all of the six princesses.
| BOOK ISBN |
9781781554852 |
| FORMAT |
234 x 156 mm |
| BINDING |
Paperback |
| PAGES |
304 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE |
15 February 2016 |
| TERRITORY |
World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS |
25 black-and-white illustrations |
Dorothy Margaret Stuart was a poet and the author of 28 books, mainly historical biographies. Little is known of her life and it seems likely, or at least plausible that she was a direct descendent of Bess. Notwithstanding this, and the inevitable favourable colour with which she paints her subject, Dorothy Stuart was a poetess and an author of skilled old-school competence and as a consequence her text reads smoothly, cleanly with well-crafted passages making the biography a delight to read. She died unmarried in 1963.
