Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands, From 1848 to 1861.

VICTORIA, Queen.

Item Number: 116376

London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1868.

Second edition of Victoria’s immensely popular book which sold twenty thousand copies. Octavo, original green cloth with gilt titles and decorations to the spine and front panel, illustrated with engravings including tissue-guarded frontispiece. Presentation copy, inscribed by Queen Victoria in the year of publication on the second free endpaper, “To Sir Francis Seymour Bart: from Victoria Reg Windsor Castle April 16 1868.” The recipient, Sir Francis Seymour, 1st Baronet, was a British Army officer and courtier. His son, Albert Victor Francis Seymour, who was born when Seymour was 74 years old served as a Page of Honour to Queen Victoria. In very good condition.

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. Acquired by Prince Albert in 1852, the Balmoral Estate 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.