The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

Famous queens from Semiramis and Dido to Victoria: Cleopatra, Zenobia, Matilda of Flanders, Margaret of Anjou, Catharine of Aragon, Elizabeth and Mary of Scots, Catherine de' Medici, Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Marie Antoinette and the Empresses Josephine and Eugénie. Lydia Hoyt Farmer wrote it as a companion to her book of famous rulers, for girl readers whose schoolbooks left women out, and told each life as a story rather than a lesson. The longest chapters go to Cleopatra, the rivalry of Elizabeth and Mary, Marie Antoinette and Josephine. Twenty-two plates range from Claude Lorrain and Turner seascapes to Las Meninas and the Oxford High Street, a painted procession of the queens and courts the chapters describe.