Queenship in Britain, 1660-1837

This is an important book, which has been attractively produced by Manchester University Press. It is, indeed, as Clarissa Campbell Orr claims in her introduction, a ‘pioneering’ attempt to link ‘court studies with women's history’ (p. 1). The volume works well because it brings together the work of some of the most interesting scholars in the field; it thus provides an excellent overview of the current state of scholarship, elegantly contextualised in Campbell Orr's introduction, and offers valuable pointers for future research. In some respects the book's sub-title is a better guide to its contents than the title. While it is certainly about royal women, only half of the ten chapters are about the practice of queenship in Britain, while a further chapter and a half focus on Caroline of Ansbach before she became queen. This is not a complaint. Richard King's examination of the patronage and practice of Anne of Hanover, daughter of George II, in the fields of painting and especially music is one of the book's outstanding chapters and provides a brilliant account of what could be achieved even on the limited resources of a princess of the house of Orange. By highlighting the contacts between Britain, Hanover and Prussia, it also offers a suggestive insight into the cultural links that existed across northern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century and the key role of royal patronage in sustaining them. Veronica Baker-Smith offers a glimpse into the part played by women in the dynastic politics of the period in her study of George II's daughters. The role of princesses of Wales as queens-in-waiting, helping their husbands to construct competing images of royalty while presiding over rival courts, is strikingly revealed by Christine Gerrard in an essay that illuminates particularly effectively the different ways in which Caroline and Augusta tried to exploit images of motherhood. Meanwhile, John Bullion looks at Augusta's adept political manoeuvrings after the death of her husband. What is, perhaps, more surprising about the book's coverage is the absence of two queens: Mary II and Caroline of Brunswick. Given the latter's relatively short life as queen, her omission is perhaps understandable. Mary's omission is less so, despite the editor's explanation that she received a good measure of coverage at the time of the tercentenary of the 1688 revolution. But, given the amount of work that has been done on the court, court culture and royal women since then, given that she provides a sharp contrast to Anne as a queen regnant, and given that she offers a very different cultural context from both her Stuart predecessors and her Hanoverian successors, this lacuna is disappointing

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