Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz: The Enlightened Nurturer

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Hanoverian to Windsor Consorts

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

Abstract

After Caroline of Ansbach, Charlotte was the second princess of a minor German principality to marry an English king of the House of Hanover. Like her predecessor, she dutifully secured the succession by producing numerous offspring and shared the same keen interest in philosophy, music, science, and medical improvements. However, she shaped her life and image as consort not so much by openly striving for political influence but by subtly supporting the interests of the monarch and promoting her own ideal of marriage and motherhood via patronage and self-fashioning. During her long-standing presence as consort over nearly six decades, she created her own emblematic iconography by adapting it to political and social changes and disseminating it via various media. Against the background of George III’s growing illness, which provoked mocking caricatures and increasing political instability, Charlotte’s self-fashioning became a symbol of domestic, dynastic, and national integrity as well as fidelity.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Walley Chamberlain Oulton, Authentic and Impartial Memoirs of Her Late Majesty Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1819); John Watkins, Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty, Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain (London, 1819); Alice Drayton Greewood, Lives of the Hanoverian Queens of England, 2 vols. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1909–1911). For further references, see: Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Charlotte [Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz] (1744–1818),” ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5162.

  2. 2.

    Olwen Hedley, Queen Charlotte (London: Murray, 1975).

  3. 3.

    See: Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Marriage in a Global Context: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland,” in Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics, c.1500–1800, ed. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Adam Morton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 109–131.

  4. 4.

    See: Michael Levey, A Royal Subject: Portraits of Queen Charlotte (London: The National Portrait Gallery, 1977); and Karin Schrader, “Between Representation and Intimacy: The Portrait Miniatures of the Georgian Queens,” in European Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions and Collections, ed. Bernd Pappe, Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, and Gerrit Walczak (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2014), 27–37. For instance, the Victoria & Albert Museum holds a Jasperware plaque depicting Charlotte (414: 1251–1885), and the British Museum likewise holds a porcelain tankard (1887,0307, X.14).

  5. 5.

    Friederike Drinkuth, ed., Königin Charlotte: Eine Prinzessin aus Mecklenburg-Strelitz besteigt den englischen Thron (Schwerin: Helms, 2011), 3.

  6. 6.

    Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Great Britain and Electress of Hanover: Northern Dynasties and the Northern Republic of Letters,” in Queenship in Europe, 1660–1815: The Role of the Consort, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 368–402; Campbell Orr, “Marriage in a Global Context,” 110, 113.

  7. 7.

    Campbell Orr, “Marriage in a Global Context,” 116.

  8. 8.

    See: Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 28; Drinkuth, Königin Charlotte, 10.

  9. 9.

    Georgian Papers Online (http://gpp.rct.uk., January 2020) RA GEO/ADD/43/6: Diaries, essays, and notes of Queen Charlotte. See also: Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Queen Charlotte, ‘Scientific Queen,’” in Queenship in Britain, 1660–1837: Royal Patronage, Court Culture, and Dynastic Politics, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 240.

  10. 10.

    Heidi A. Strobel, The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte (1744–1818): How a Queen Promoted Both Art and Female Artists in English Society (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011), 51.

  11. 11.

    Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 3–6.

  12. 12.

    Mascha Hansen, “Queen Charlotte and the Character of the Monarchy,” in Anglistentag 2014 Hannover: Proceedings</Emphasis>, ed. Rainer Emig and Jana Gohrisch (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015), 141.

  13. 13.

    Strobel, The Artistic Matronage, 58.

  14. 14.

    See: Schrader, “Between Representation and Intimacy,” 32.

  15. 15.

    Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 403562, oil on canvas, 134.9 × 96.8 cm.

  16. 16.

    “Letter to Henry Seymour Conway, 9 September 1761,” in The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. Wilmarth S. Lewis, 41 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–1983), 38:116.

  17. 17.

    “Letter to Sir Horace Mann, 10 September 1761,” Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 21:529.

  18. 18.

    Jeremy Black, George III (London: Penguin, 2020), 17.

  19. 19.

    Charlotte Louisa Henrietta Papendiek, Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: Being the Journals of Mrs. Papendiek, Assistant-Keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to Her Majesty, ed. V.D. Broughton, 2 vols. (London, 1887), 2:9. See also: Jane Roberts, ed., George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste (London: Royal Collection, 2004), 49.

  20. 20.

    Amelia Murray, Recollections from 1803 to 1837: With a Conclusion in 1868 (London, 1868), 143–145.

  21. 21.

    Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 405308.

  22. 22.

    Cassandra Albinson and Mark Hallett, “Cornucopia: Royal Female Portraiture and the Imperatives of Reproduction,” in Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, ed. Joanna Marschner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 95.

  23. 23.

    See mezzotints in the British Museum, acc. no. 1902,1011.3226, and National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. D9089; painting in the Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 400146; miniatures in different media in the Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 4424, RCIN 22465, RCIN 421437, RCIN 45755.

  24. 24.

    For Charlotte’s jewellery, see: Marcia Pointon, Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 179–199.

  25. 25.

    Drinkuth, Königin Charlotte, 34; Georgian Papers Online (http://gpp.rct.uk., January 2020) RA GEO/MAIN/36352–36354: Queen Charlotte to George III, 26 April 1778.

  26. 26.

    Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett, 7 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1958–1978), 2:392.

  27. 27.

    This had been specified in the first paragraph of the short marriage contract, written in Latin: “Conclusum et coventum est, quod / Matrimonium … In Regno Magnae Britanniae, propriis Person(a) / Secundum debitum Legum Angliae Tenorem, / Jura, Ritus, Ceremoniasque Ecclesio Anglicano / Quam primum commodé fieri potest, post / Dicte Principis adventum in Regnum Magnae / Britanniae celebrabitur.” TNA SP 108/554.

  28. 28.

    Percy H. Fitzgerald, The Good Queen Charlotte (1899; Norderstedt: Hansebooks GmbH, 2017), 5–6.

  29. 29.

    See: Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 14.

  30. 30.

    Quoted in Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 122.

  31. 31.

    Flora Fraser, Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III (London: Murray, 2005), 494.

  32. 32.

    Hansen, “Queen Charlotte,” 148.

  33. 33.

    Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404922.

  34. 34.

    Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 24.

  35. 35.

    In addition to the pastel, an enlargement in oil was commissioned by the Queen. See: Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404396.

  36. 36.

    Quoted in Albinson, “Cornucopia,” 100.

  37. 37.

    Royal Collection Trust RCIN 400501, RCIN 401004.

  38. 38.

    Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 4001007.

  39. 39.

    Quoted in Campbell Orr, “Queen Charlotte, ‘Scientific Queen,’” 240.

  40. 40.

    Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 12.

  41. 41.

    See also: Georgian Papers Online (http://gpp.rct.uk., January 2020) RA GEO/ADD/43/7: Essays on the history of the English monarchy from Edward V to Henry VII by Charlotte, Queen Consort of George III (26 November 1792) and RA GEO/ADD43/19l: ‘Tableau de l’Europe au commencement du 19eme Siecle’ in hand of Charlotte, Queen Consort to George III [n.d. between 1800 and 1818].

  42. 42.

    See letter to her brother from 10 February 1772, Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, 4.3-2 Hausarchiv des Mecklenburg-Strelitzschen Fürstenhauses mit Briefsammlung.

  43. 43.

    Campbell Orr, “Northern Dynasties,” 377.

  44. 44.

    Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 187.

  45. 45.

    Quoted in Campbell Orr, “Queen Charlotte, ‘Scientific Queen,’” 249.

  46. 46.

    Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 12.

  47. 47.

    Quoted in Strobel, Artistic Matronage, 37.

  48. 48.

    See: Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 88–108; Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 1–37.

  49. 49.

    Campbell Orr, “Northern Dynasties,” 374.

  50. 50.

    Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 604645.

  51. 51.

    Quoted in Campbell Orr, “Queen Charlotte, ‘Scientific Queen,’” 236.

  52. 52.

    Christopher Lloyd, “George III and His Painters,” in The Wisdom of George the Third: Papers from a Symposium at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace June 2004, ed. Jonathan Marsden (London: Royal Collection Publications, 2005), 84–99.

  53. 53.

    Roberts, George III and Queen Charlotte, 164.

  54. 54.

    Strobel, Artistic Matronage, 4.

  55. 55.

    The Royal Collection Trust holds several examples. See, for instance: RCIN 604618.

  56. 56.

    Strobel, Artistic Matronage, 125–177.

  57. 57.

    See: Arthur Burns and Karin Wulf, “George III: The Eighteenth Century’s Most Prominent Mental Health Patient,” accessed 30 December 2020, https://georgianpapers.com/explore-the-collections/virtual-exhibits/.

  58. 58.

    See: Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 165.

  59. 59.

    Quoted in Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 17.

  60. 60.

    National Gallery, London, inv. no. 4257; quoted in Levey, A Royal Subject, 7.

  61. 61.

    Quoted in Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 193.

  62. 62.

    Quoted in Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 194.

  63. 63.

    Samantha Howard, “Frogmore,” in Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 359–362.

  64. 64.

    Quoted in Campbell Orr, “Marriage in a Global Context,” 126.

  65. 65.

    Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Queen Charlotte and Her Circle,” in The Wisdom of George the Third: Papers from a Symposium at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace June 2004, ed. Jonathan Marsden (London: Royal Collection Publications, 2005), 162–178.

  66. 66.

    Marschner, Enlightened Princesses, 19.

  67. 67.

    Strobel, Artistic Matronage, 33; see RCIN 1128954.

  68. 68.

    Campbell Orr, “Marriage in a global context,” 126.

  69. 69.

    The Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 913865 and 405423.

  70. 70.

    See, for example, Royal Collection Trust RCIN 421672, 421852, 422429, and 422431.

  71. 71.

    Hedley, Queen Charlotte, 295.

  72. 72.

    Mascha Hansen is preparing the edition of Charlotte’s letters to her brother.

  73. 73.

    Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett, 7 vols. (London, 1854), 7:268.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Scholar, Germany

    Karin Schrader

Authors
  1. Karin Schrader
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karin Schrader .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Campus North Lincolnshire, England, UK

    Aidan Norrie

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Carolyn Harris

  3. University of Reading, Reading, UK

    J.L. Laynesmith

  4. York, UK

    Danna R. Messer

  5. University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Elena Woodacre

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Schrader, K. (2023). Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz: The Enlightened Nurturer. In: Norrie, A., Harris, C., Laynesmith, J., Messer, D.R., Woodacre, E. (eds) Hanoverian to Windsor Consorts. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12829-5_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12829-5_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12828-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12829-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation