Meriel, Lucy, Lavinia and May, the daughters of George, Fourth Lord Lyttelton, were the nieces of the Prime Minister William Gladstone. Their letters and diaries make it possible for us to know them in extraordinary detail: at home at Hagley Hall in Worcestershire and in fashionable London society; at country houses and on tours of the Continent; in the schoolroom and embarking on courtship and marriage; in happiness and in adversity. Despite having eight very successful brothers, the girls emerge in their own right as strong characters. Victorian Girls is a remarkable portrait of a family. It is impossible not to feel personally involved in their lives.

Author Biography

Sheila Fletcher was an outstanding and highly original historian of women's education and of women's lives. She published her first historical work at the age of 56, but her books combine scholarship, wit and readability. She was born in Mansfield in 1924, her father of Huguenot, and her mother of Scottish, descent. She read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and in 1944 went on to work at the Ministry of Education, where she remained until 1951. Her long-term interest in women's education, her sense of character and her writing ability came together in Victorian Girls: Lord Lyttelton's daughters, the book for which she is likely to be remembered. Allowed a full run of the Lyttelton archives, the wonderfully rich sources and Fletcher's remarkable eye for detail led to a compelling book. Before she died in 2001, she was working on a last book, on Mary Gladstone, the daughter of the prime minister.