George III: A Personal History was published by Viking in 1998. The king who lost America, went mad, and was lampooned by Whig historians for two centuries receives from Hibbert a biography that is sympathetic without being revisionist: George was indeed stubborn, limited in his political imagination, and disastrously wrong about the American colonies, but he was also hardworking, culturally engaged, personally decent, and far more intelligent than his reputation suggests.
Hibbert draws on the extensive royal correspondence and the queen’s diaries to reconstruct the private life of a man who was happily married (unusual for a Hanoverian monarch), passionately interested in agriculture and science (he was known as “Farmer George”), and devoted to his many children with a warmth that his public persona did not convey. The bouts of illness — now generally attributed to the metabolic disorder porphyria — are described with clinical precision and human sympathy: the king raving, restrained, subjected to treatments that were themselves forms of torture, and then recovering his faculties with a clarity that made the episodes even more terrifying in retrospect.
The political narrative covers the American Revolution, the wars with France, the rise and fall of ministries, and the Regency crisis — six decades of the most turbulent period in British history — but Hibbert keeps the focus personal. His George III is not a great king but a good man, doing his best in circumstances that would have defeated anyone.
Collecting George III
First edition (Viking, London, 1998): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20