QUEEN Victoria's writing skills have been praised by children's author Jacqueline Wilson ahead of the publication of a story penned by the monarch when a young girl.
Wilson has described how Victoria - whose diary extracts were a best seller in their day - could have been a good fiction author as well.
Writing the introduction to The Adventures Of Alice Laselles by Alexandrina Victoria, Aged 10 and 3/4, the popular writer said: "If Victoria hadn't been destined to be Queen, I think she might have made a remarkable novelist."
The story will be published for the first time in June by the Royal Collection Trust and tells the tale of a 12-year-old girl who is sent away to boarding school after her father remarries.
In the passage when Alice hears the news that she is to be sent to Mrs Duncombe's school for girls, Victoria writes: "'Oh do not send me away dear Pappa', exclaimed Alice Laselles, as she threw her arms around her Pappa's neck; 'don't send me away, O let me stay with you.' And she sobbed bitterly."
The story is written in an unassuming red 'Composition' notebook, now in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, and bears the dedication "To my dear Mamma, this my first attempt at composition is affectionately and dutifully inscribed by her affectionate daughter, Victoria."
From the age of 13, Victoria kept journals, 141 volumes, and in her lifetime became a best-selling author with books, compiled from her diaries, that described her life in the Highlands.
Victoria's story comes to its climax when Alice is wrongly accused of allowing a cat into the school without the permission of Mrs Duncombe.
Someone has attached a red ribbon to the cat with Alice's name on it, and Alice is distraught that one of her new classmates would commit such an act "out of malice, out of pure unkindness, to a poor helpless stranger".
However, the true culprit is soon revealed, and Alice goes on to flourish at her lessons, and in three months is "one of the best learners in the school".
The book's illustrations have been produced by combining Felix Petruska's digitally manipulated copies of the paper dolls made by Victoria and her governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen, with etchings by Cristina Pieropan.
Jacky Colliss Harvey, publisher, Royal Collection Trust, said: "Queen Victoria is well known for the journals she wrote as an adult, but this composition, which she produced as a child, has never been published before.
"I am delighted that for the first time this beautifully illustrated story, written nearly 200 years ago by a real Princess, is now available for today's little princesses to enjoy."
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