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From 1935 to 1939, audiences on both sides of the Atlantic thronged theatres to see Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina , a series of vignettes about the life of Queen Victoria. Those unable to purchase tickets were able to read about the show in magazines and newspapers, listen to a radio production, and purchase clothing and home furnishings that reflected the revival of interest in the Victorian era. Yet to the extent that scholars have discussed this incredibly popular play and the Victorian revival that it spawned, they tend to ascribe its success to a nostalgic impulse, or what Alison Light has described as the phenomenon of 'conservative modernity'. This article reframes Victoria Regina , by treating it as a site of provocation and meaning-making in a charged transatlantic context. As I show, Housman (1865–1959)—a free speech advocate, Quaker pacifist, committed internationalist, anti-imperialist, feminist, and nascent gay rights activist—wanted to use Victoria to goad, intentionally so. His Victoria may have been romantic and feminine, but she was still intended as a vehicle of dissent. Housman wrote Victoria Regina primarily to protest censorship laws in Britain, but also to provide a more woman-centered version of the nation's past, and to promote conciliation over the conflict between Germany and Britain. It was in its capacity as a cultural bridge between the UK and the USA, however, that Victoria Regina ended up making its most sizeable impact. This article thus offers an important meditation not only on the relationship between theatre and politics in the interwar period but also on the Victorian inheritance and its continuing and sometimes surprising applications in the twentieth century—especially in facilitating the Anglo-American 'special relationship'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how a broad cross-section of Britons-including government officials, missionaries, journalists, novelists, and travelers-used the controversial Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar (who reigned from 1828 to 1861) as a means of defining and delimiting Queen Victoria's own reign during the British monarch's first decades on the throne. In highlighting Ranavalona's critical, though heretofore largely overlooked, role in the construction of Victoria, this article makes two key contributions. First, it draws heightened attention to the transnational and imperial dimensions of the process by which Victorians 'made' their queen. Second, it illuminates the depth and persistence of 'problems of female rule' in Victorian Britain, problems that the foreign female sovereigns with whom Britons regularly interacted did as much to perpetuate as to resolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development and use of revenue impressed stamps in Singapore during the Victorian era. It states that stamp tax had long been considered in Singapore, wherein a meeting was convened to consider a proposal by the government of Bengal to develop a stamp tax in lieu of the Siri farm which the government advised to abolish. It adds that impressed stamps were re-introduced in 1883, which led to the development of the Queen Victoria portrait design impressed stamps.

Hemophilia is a rare bleeding disorder inherited by males born of unaffected female carriers of the trait. British physicians became knowledgeable about this hereditary disease early in the nineteenth century as they investigated families transmitting the character through several generations. Prince Leopold (b. 1853), the fourth son of Queen Victoria, experienced recurrent bleeding episodes and was diagnosed with hemophilia during childhood. His hemorrhagic attacks were first described in the medical journals during 1868, and subsequently in the London and provincial newspapers. The royal family carefully managed news about health matters, and many newspapers reported widespread public sympathy for the travails of the queen and her children. But the republican press argued that the disaffected working classes resented the hyperbole connecting the health of royal individuals with the political future of the entire nation. Public discussion of hemophilia transformed it from a rare medical phenomenon to a matter of national news. Practicing physicians, the royal family, and the general public all came to understand the clinical features and the hereditary nature of the problem. Members of the royal family subsequently utilized this information to guide the marriages of their own children to prevent the spread of this dreaded bleeding disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the performances of U.S. sharpshooter Annie Oakley and focuses upon Oakley's impact on the Victorian era. The article states that British queen Victoria was among Oakley's most ardent fans, and the author examines Victoria's reputed conservatism and its juxtaposition with progress for women during the era. The article also discusses the significance of Oakley's American audience, particularly among women. The article examines Oakley's performances for "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" show operated by Buffalo Bill Cody.

The article discusses the work and life story of the 19th-century cartoonist Matthew Somerville Morgan as an engagement with Victorian attitude to sex and sexuality in England. It describes how some of his cartoons focused on the alleged or actual impropriety of the Prince of Wales and of Queen Victoria. Insights into the limits of Victorian-era male heterosexuality and the expression of it both in public and private are addressed.

The article presents criticism on the Scottish film "Mrs. Brown," directed by John Madden. The author states that the film should earn scholarly attention for its merit on the portrayal of the relationship of Great Britain's Queen Victoria played by Judi Dench, to her Scottish gillie John Brown played by Billy Connolly, after the death of her husband Prince Albert. He also argued that the film shows the relationship of Great Britain and Scotland, while its cinematography is also discussed.

Argues that the extraordinary popularity of Queen Victoria of England during the last three decades of her reign was the consequence of her adept manipulation of the relationship between her images and sentiments publicized in her autobiographical writings. Transformation of the gendered body into a national icon; Public display of the Queen's body in visual images that memorialized her life with Prince Albert.