The Lost Voice of Queen Victoria : The Search for the First Royal Recording

Tritton, Paul

ISBN 10: 1873361114 / ISBN 13: 9781873361115

Published by Academy Books, London, 1991

About this Item

Dust jacket complete, sellotaped to paste downs. Illustrations / Photographs. 144 pages clean and tight. The Lost Voice of Queen Victoria "A gramophone was brought to Balmoral by Mr Morse and after the household had recorded whistles and German jokes. Her Majesty spoke a few words." The Countess of Longford, Victoria R.I. Queen Victoria was the first reigning monarch to make a sound recording. She did this in 1888 for Sydney Morse, an emminent London solicitor, who took a Graphophone recording machine to Balmoral, where he made a number of recordings. Until now historians have simply assumed that no recording of the Queen's voice had survived into this century and that Morse's recording had been irretrievably lost. They reckoned without the persistence of award-winning author Paul Tritton, who. after painstaking research, embarked on a trail that led to the Science Museum, where a Graphophone cylinder had been stored since 1929, its historic significance unrecognized. The Lost Voice of Queen Victoria presents Tritton's evidence about the introduction of recorded sound into Britain, the fate of Morse's recordings, the problems that had to be overcome to get the suspected "Queen Victoria" cylinder played and the astonishing results heard when the recording was enhanced by the latest audio technology. Size: 8vo. Seller Inventory # 129140

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Lost Voice of Queen Victoria : The ...

Publisher: Academy Books, London

Publication Date: 1991

Binding: Hard Cover

Illustrator: Illustrations / Photographs

Condition: Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

1991 Academy hardcover, Paul Tritton (The Godfather of Rolls-Royce). There is no real doubt that Britain’s longest-reigning monarch allowed her voice to be recorded. The man who made the recording freely discussed it and it is recalled in a letter in the Royal Archives, dated 1907; the incident also rates a passing mention (without a source attribution) in Elizabeth Longford’s exhaustive biography of the Queen, Victoria R.I. The question is what happened to the recording after it was made—and, in a broader sense, why it matters whether it still exists. - Amazon