Lot No. 43: RICHARD R. HOLMES (LIBRARIAN TO THE QUEEN)

RICHARD R. HOLMES (LIBRARIAN TO THE QUEEN)

QUEEN VICTORIA

Year: 1897

Size: 32.2 x 25.3 cm (12.6 x 9.9 inches)

Published by Boussod, Valadon & Co., Fine Art Publishers to Her Majesty.

Paperback. Text set up and printed in London by J.S.Virtue & Co. The plates were engraved and printed by Boussod, Valadon & Co. at Paris.
200 pages with colored frontispiece depicting a young Queen and Prince of Wales from a miniature by Robert Thorburn.

41 high quality Engraved plates, many full-page with printed tissue guards.

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. 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".

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Provenance : Collection of a Gentleman