Queen Victoria’s extensive collection of official and private correspondence as well as her journal, which, although heavily edited by her daughter, Princess Beatrice, still amounts to 141 volumes, was one of the main causes for the establishment of the Royal Archives. 

Organised by her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, until 1840, and then by Prince Albert until his death in 1861, Queen Victoria’s papers were meticulously sorted. Her official papers, concerning domestic, foreign and imperial affairs, cover a period of remarkable change. Her extensive private correspondence, primarily with her uncle, Leopold I, King of the Belgians, and her eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal (later Empress Frederick), and also with other relatives, ministers and foreign royals, show the Queen’s close relationship with her family, friends and associates.

Cambridge Papers

Among the collections of other members of the Royal Family in the Archives are the military papers of George, Duke of Cambridge (1819–1904), uncle of Queen Mary, who served
as Commander-in-Chief of the Army from 1856 to 1895. These papers are of immense use to military historians of the nineteenth century, and are available on microfilm at the British Library and elsewhere.