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Collection	Victorian Papers, Main Series
Reference	VIC/MAIN/QVJ/HIND
Title	Queen Victoria's 'Hindustani Diaries'
Date	1892-1900
Description	Within a few weeks of their arrival in 1887, Queen Victoria notes in her journal that '[I] am learning a few words of Hindustani [Urdu] to speak to my [Indian] servants'. This progressed to writing lessons from Mohammed Abdul Karim whose role had become that of the Queen's Indian Secretary and 'Munshi', or teacher. The volumes in this series appear to be the record of the daily exercises the Queen undertook, as a section of her daily journal entry is written in Urdu. As the first 7 volumes of those that survive here are numbered 6-12 on the covers, there may have been at least 13 volumes in all. The final volume in the series appears to be a vocabulary and phrase book probably written by the Munshi himself.
Language	Urdu
Language	English
Extent	9 volumes
Physical Description	8 black and gold volumes and 1 small red and gold volume
Access Conditions	Available in surrogate form only
Level	Sub-series

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