More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands.

VICTORIA, Queen.

Item Number: 64014

London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1884.

First edition. Octavo, original green cloth. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Major the Hon: H. Legge, In recollection of his: 5 & 4- 1889 at Balmoral from Victoria R. I., Oct. 11, 1889.” Hon. Heneage Legge served as Gentleman Usher Quarterly Waiter in the Royal household of Queen Victoria from 1805 to 1844. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Consort were known to have taken a great affection to their staff. Acquired by Prince Albert in 1852, their Balmoral Estate in the Scottish Highlands became the Royal couple’s favorite summer home. Queen Victoria had a pyramid-shaped cairn erected in memory of the Prince on top of Craig Lurachain in 1862, one year after his death in 1861. Rare with noted provenance.

Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she had the additional title of Empress of India. Her 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. Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life. From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes. After Victoria's death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor. Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria's accession onwards, and burned the originals in the process. After the death of Prince Albert and the beginning of her long period of mourning, Victoria withdrew from public view. But she did not wholly vanish from public life, for she reappeared as an author through her published accounts of the world around Balmoral, her Scottish retreat and the backdrop for her great friendship with John Brown. The theme of the book is described Queen Victoria as how her sad and suffering heart was soothed and cheered by the excursions and incidents it recounts.