Queen Victoria's Journals

For the first time ever, all the personal journals of Queen Victoria have been made available to search and read online. This unique resource, developed in partnership by the Bodleian Libraries, the Royal Archives and ProQuest, is freely available for the public to access at http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.dournals.org through June 30, 2012.

The journals, which span Victoria’s lifetime and consist of 141 volumes numbering over 33,000 pages, have never been published in their entirety and previously were only accessible by appointment at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. In addition to autograph diaries begun by the youthful Princess Victoria, there are edited versions from her later years, redacted and transcribed by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Beatrice.

All the journals are now available via this easy-to-use website and can be browsed and read online. Pages from the journals can be searched by date or place of writing, and transcriptions of each page–searchable by keyword–are currently provided for the period up to 1840, with further releases planned throughout 2012. The site includes an interactive timeline and drawings by Queen Victoria, along with selections from her sketchbooks. Importantly, the site includes a number of essays about aspects of Queen Victoria’s life, authored by Sir Roy Strong, Laurence Goldman and Peter Ward-Jones among others.