LONDON.- A story written by Queen Victoria at the age of ten is to be published for the first time this summer. The Adventures of Alice Laselles by Alexandrina Victoria, Aged 10 and 3/4 gives a fascinating and endearing glimpse into the vivid imagination of the future monarch. The earliest work by the Queen ever to be published, it tells the tale of a twelve-year-old girl who is sent away to boarding school after her father remarries. Princess Victoria originally called her story 'The School', but then changed the title to 'Alice', in honour of her lead protagonist.

From the age of 13 Victoria kept journals, which number over 43,000 pages and 141 volumes, and in her lifetime she even became a best-selling author. 'Alice' is written in an unassuming red 'Composition' notebook, now in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, and bears the dedication 'To my dear Mamma, this my first attempt at composition is affectionately and dutifully inscribed by her affectionate daughter, Victoria.'

The story reveals Victoria's natural flair for writing, as well as her active imagination and tendency towards the dramatic, which was very much in keeping with the tone of children's literature at the time. In the passage when Alice hears the news that she is to be sent to Mrs Duncombe's school for girls, Victoria writes, 'Oh do not send me away dear Pappa', exclaimed Alice Laselles, as she threw her arms around her Pappa’s neck; ‘don’t send me away, O let me stay with you.’ And she sobbed bitterly.

Among the other characters introduced by Victoria are Barbara, the clever daughter of a rich London banker, whose unconquerable pride ‘spoiled her otherwise fine expression’; a ‘poor little French orphan’, Ernestine Duval, who had suffered from ‘the small pox, by which malady she had lost one eye’; and Diana O’Reilly, who was left with a nurse for ten years after the death of her mother. On his return from India, Diana's father found a ‘tall girl of a most uncouth appearance’, who spoke in an 'unintelligible' brogue. Diana was sent away to Miss Duncombe's school ‘directly’.

Victoria's story comes to its climax when Alice is wrongly accused of allowing a cat into the school without the permission of Mrs Duncombe. Someone has attached a red ribbon to the cat with Alice's name on it, and Alice is distraught that one of her new classmates would commit such an act 'out of malice, out of pure unkindness, to a poor helpless stranger'. However, the true culprit is soon revealed, and Alice goes on to flourish at her lessons, and in three months is ‘one of the best learners in the school’.

The book’s beautiful illustrations have been produced by combining Felix Petruška's digitally manipulated copies of the paper dolls made by Princess Victoria and her governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen, with etchings by Cristina Pieropan. In one image Alice sobs as she says goodbye to her 'dear Pappa', while in another the girls and Mrs Duncombe are in a sitting room at the school, where the pupils play cards by a roaring fire, and the cat in question perches on a cushion.

Jacky Colliss Harvey, Publisher, Royal Collection Trust, said, 'Queen Victoria is well known for the journals she wrote as an adult, but this composition, which she produced as a child, has never been published before. I am delighted that for the first time this beautifully illustrated story, written nearly 200 years ago by a real Princess, is now available for today's little princesses to enjoy.'

Jacqueline Wilson said, 'If Victoria hadn’t been destined to be Queen, I think she might have made a remarkable novelist.'