This nine-volume selection from the letters of Queen Victoria, with ancillary material, was commissioned by her son, Edward VII, and published between 1907 and 1932, with a gap of almost twenty years between the third and fourth volumes. The editors of the first three volumes, the poet and writer A. C. Benson (1862-1925) and the second Viscount Esher (1852-1930), administrator and courtier, decided that the plan for the selection of letters from the thousands available should be to publish ‘such documents as would serve to bring out the development of the Queen’s character and disposition, and to give typical instances of her methods in dealing with political and social matters’. Volume 3 covers the period 1854-61, including the events of the Crimean War, and ends with the Queen’s anguish at the death of the Prince Consort. It also contains an index to the first three volumes.