Victoria Rebels Blog Tour: Guest Post & Giveaway

Victoria Rebels
Author: Carolyn Meyer
Genre: YA Historical Fiction
Release Date: January 1, 2013
Publisher: Paula Wiseman Books

Description:

Queen Victoria’s personal journals inform this captivating first-person account of one of history’s most prominent female leaders.

Queen Victoria most certainly left a legacy—under her rule as the longest reigning female monarch in history, the British Empire was greatly expanded and significant industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military changes occurred within the United Kingdom. To be a young woman in a time when few other females held positions of power was to lead in a remarkable age—and because Queen Victoria kept personal journals, this historical novel from award-winning author Carolyn Meyer shares authentic emotional insight along with accurate information, weaving a true story of intrigue and romance.  

The request for Top Ten list of my favorite books always stops me in my tracks, because I simply don't have ten favorites of anything--OK, maybe food or cities--but definitely not books. My life is books. I'm surrounded by them, involved with them constantly, both as writer and reader. So please let me take this request in another direction. Let me tell you about the books I read while I was writing Victoria Rebels. 

Queen Victoria: A Personal History by biographer Christopher Hibbert was my starting point, so that I could get an overview of Victoria's life. Then I moved on to two biographies about the young Victoria: Becoming Victoria by Lynne Vallone which had beautiful illustrations, and Alison Plowden's The Young Victoria. Those led to A Royal Conflict: Sir John Conroy and the Young Victoria, by Katherine Hudson. Next I began filling in the gaps with two versions of Daily Life in Victorian England, one by Hibbert, another by Sally Mitchell. I referred often to Lytton Strachey's 1921 volume, Queen Victoria, but it was this discovery at the university library that brought it all together: The girlhood of Queen Victoria; a selection from Her Majesty's diaries between the years 1832 and 1840, edited by Viscount Esher and published in 1912, eleven years after her death in 1901. 

After mining all of this wonderful material, naturally I searched the internet for websites that might add interesting and colorful bits and pieces. This is the process I've used with all of my historical novels. Some of the books go back to the library once I've used them; often, though, when a book is particularly useful, I order a copy and mark it up fearlessly, after which it retires to my shelf. But to find a favorite among all that? Not a chance.

A huge thank you to Carolyn for stopping by the blog today and sharing some of her favorite and most influential books with us!

Carolyn Meyer is as versatile a writer as you will find. Along with historical fiction and realistic novels for young adults she has written nonfiction for young adults and books for younger readers on topics as diverse as the Amish, the Irish, Japanese, Yup'ik Eskimos, a rock band, rock tumbling, bread baking, and coconuts. And ten of her books have been chosen as Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. In her most recent historical novels she has dealt with the young lives of Mary Tudor, Princess Elizabeth, Anastasia, and Isabel of Castilla, Spain.  

http://www.readcarolyn.com/

 

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