Vernacular Victoria: The Queen in the Languages of South Asia began life as an international online colloquium hosted by the Department of English at Ashoka University, Haryana, in collaboration with the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad (India). Participants were invited to give papers based on an archive of vernacular eulogies, addresses, memorials, and biographies collected by Miles Taylor during the course of research for his book Empress: Queen Victoria and India (Yale University Press, 2018). Following the colloquium of April 26–27, 2021, further commissions were undertaken as the editors broadened the scope of the project.