Frederick Ponsonby

Letters of the Empress Frederick Frederick Ponsonby

LETTERS OF THE EMPRESS FREDERICK, a selection of correspondence from the Empress to her mother, Queen Victoria, was published in 1928. The former Princess Royal of England, who married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in 1858, had never been popular in court circles in Germany because of her liberal influence on her husband and was known behind her back as 'die Engländerin'. When Emperor Frederick III ascended the throne in March 1888, he was fatally stricken with cancer and died after a reign of three months. Their eldest so, who became Emperor William II, the 'Kaiser Bill' of the First World War, had no respect for their ideals. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, her godson, was entrusted with the safe keeping of her letters shortly before her death in 1901, and he took them back to England. His purpose in publishing them, in his words, was 'to allow the Empress's own words to provide the answer to those cruel and slanderous accusations from which her memory has suffered'. This new edition includes the complete text, a Foreword by John Van der Kiste, and additional illustrations.