Information about the Royal Archives
Victorian Papers
Victorian Papers, Main Series
Queen Victoria’s vast collection of official, or state, papers, reflect the changing political and social landscape of the Victorian age. In addition to volumes of letters written to the Queen by Prime Ministers and Ministers, the Victorian Main series contains documents relating to political matters such as changes in government, the Chartist movement, and Irish policy, domestic matters including the Royal Household, the Church, Army and Navy, as well as papers relating to education and the arts. Foreign, colonial and imperial affairs are well represented in a substantial series of correspondence arranged by country, which contains significant files on the Crimean War and the Anglo-Zulu War. Taken as a whole, this collection of papers and correspondence offer a unique and unequalled resource for historical research into nineteenth-century history.
Much of the collection remains in the filing scheme devised by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, whose interest in matters of government was restricted, in his role as Consort, to serving as unofficial Private Secretary to the Queen. Soon after their marriage in 1840, the Prince introduced a practical subject-based filing system complete with drafts, copies, summaries and annotations in his own hand.
Following the premature death of Prince Albert in 1861, his system for the management of Queen Victoria’s papers was followed carefully by the Prince’s German librarian and then by the Queen’s Private Secretary. However, by the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, there were many unsorted records covering nearly 40 years of her reign still in royal residences, many of which were added to the numerous subject files in the main series of the Victorian Papers.
The archive of Prince Albert, Prince Consort, has not survived for the most part, and the loss is particularly acute as he was a man of many interests, with a passion for change and reform. Those documents which did survive were absorbed into Queen Victoria’s files, such as the Prince’s papers concerning the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. These papers and others can be viewed online in the catalogue Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy.
Victorian Additional Papers
The Victorian Additional Papers [VIC/ADD], which comprise over one hundred individual collections, contain Victorian and Edwardian material not transferred to the Royal Archives as part of the Victorian Main Papers collections. A detailed guide to the collections can be found below.
The Additional Papers collections contain official records of Queen Victoria and Edward VII acting as Head of State and some personal papers, however a significant proportion of the collections relate to other members of the Royal family and associates. These include personal papers of Prince Albert and some of the children of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, including Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, and Arthur, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. There are also significant collections relating to Queen Alexandra, mainly dating from 1910, papers of George, Duke of Cambridge, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Forces between 1856 and 1895 and Princess Marie-Louise's correspondence relating to Queen Mary's Dolls' House.
Also included in the Additional Papers collections is material relating to various senior Victorian and Edwardian members of the Royal Household and personal attendants, such as Sir Thomas Biddulph (Master of the Household and Keeper of the Privy Purse) and Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland (Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria) There are also a few examples of documents created by lower-ranking servants in the Household, such as the diary kept by Royal Mews worker William Coman and the papers of Harriet Walton, Housekeeper at Marlborough House.
Collections relating to medical and educational professionals and those working in the arts can also be found in the Additional Papers, as can inventories and files concerning royal estates and various charities and organisations.
Detailed guide to the collections in the Victorian Additional Papers
Victorian Private Papers
The Victorian Private Papers collection reflects the personal and family life of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen was a prodigious correspondent, and the collection includes a forhttps://ra.rct.uk/midable number of private letters between Queen Victoria and her mother, husband and children (letters from her eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal and ultimately Empress Frederick of Germany, fill sixty volumes alone), in addition to correspondence with extended family in Britain and Europe, members of the aristocracy and other associates.
With some forethought, Queen Victoria requested that her letters be returned following the death of the recipient or preserved as family heirlooms. As a result, the Royal Archives holds Queen Victoria’s letters to and from her uncle and mentor, King Leopold I of the Belgians, and volumes of letters from the Queen to Lord Melbourne, her first Prime Minister and advisor.
Also included in the Private Papers collection is a series of Queen Victoria’s copy letter books dating from 1828 to 1843, which is a rare example of correspondence from the early years of her life and reign, and material relating to her life as a young Princess. Queen Victoria's celebrated Journal, written almost daily by the Queen from the age of thirteen until her death in 1901, is also part of this collection, as are Queen Victoria’s ‘Hindustani Diaries’, in which she practiced Urdu under the guidance of her Munshi, Maharajah Duleep Singh.
Papers relating to matters concerning the family of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the education of the royal children and the administration of the Royal Household, are filed in series VIC/MAIN/M.
