Queen Victoria.

HOLMES, Richard R. [Queen Victoria].

$750.00

Item Number: 139233

London: Boussod, Valadon & Co, 1897.

First edition, limited issue of this finely illustrated account of the life and reign of Queen Victoria compiled and edited by the librarian to the Queen, Richard Holmes, to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee. Folio, bound in full crushed levant morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, quadruple gilt ruling and central royal Coat of Arms to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded frontispiece of the Queen and Prince of Wales, profusely illustrated with tissue guarded engravings after portraits from the Royal Collections. One of one hundred copies printed on Japanese paper and with a duplicate series of the large plates for the British Colonies and the Continent of Europe numbered 101 to 200, this is number 178. In very good condition.

Queen Victoria's reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.