Queen Victoria, By Richard R Holmes F.S.A., Librarian to the Queen, London and Paris, Boussod, Valadon & Co. Fine Art Publishers to Her Majesty 1897, a first edition of this biography (the dates on the title page and copyright page match), with a gilt title, gilt decorations and five raised bands on the spine, green morocco boards, gilt dentelles with marbled endpapers and a green and gilt bookplate which reads “Diamond Jubilee Gift to Robert and Eliza Cumming with Much Love from William and Elizabeth 1897”, “Queen Victoria” on the half-title, then a colored frontispiece of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales with a lettered tissue guard. The text was set up and printed in London by J S Virtue, the plates were engraved and printed by Boussod, Valadon near Paris in 1897, and the top edge is gilt. There are 41 plates altogether (the colored frontispiece and forty plates in black and white), with tissue guards protecting all the plates and red titles on each of the tissue guards, and there are 195 pages of text, followed by the Contents and List of Illustrations at the rear.
The book is 4 To. and measures 13 x 10 14 in. wide. We’ve seen other copies with wormholes and detached boards, and this is nothing like that. The hinges and boards are solid, and there’s not a worm in sight. There’s light rubbing at the edges of the spine and light wear at the heel and tips, light foxing on three pages (177, 185, and 193), and the rest of the pages are clean and bright.
Queen Victoria was a British monarch who reigned for over sixty years. She ascended the throne in 1837 and the Diamond Jubilee celebrated her 60th year as Queen, and her reign was longer than that of any previous British monarch; she died three and a half years after this book was published.
See A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions, Compiled By Bill McBride, McBride Publisher, 585 Prospect Ave., West Hartford CT 06105.