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Sitwell, Edith.
Victoria of England.
Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited, London;
Date of Publication: 1936
Stock Code: 11975
FIRST EDITION. Octavo, pp. 390, [2]. Vignette to title-page and 16 monochrome full-page plates including frontispiece of the Official Coronation Portrait from the painting by Sir George Hayter. Publishers’ purple cloth with gilt titles and silhouette portrait blocked in blue and gilt to spine; top edge gilt; in unclipped pink pictorial dust-jacket designed by Barnett Freedman. Upper board bruised at top corner and spine tips lightly creased otherwise cover cloth clean and bright; faint ownership inscription dated 1940 to front paste-down. Jacket nicked & creased to edge and lightly spine sunned, with unobtrusive archive tape repair to reverse and very minor loss. A near fine copy in very good jacket. A biography (of sorts) of Queen Victoria by Dame Edith Sitwell, the dazzlingly bizarre British eccentric, poet, patron, and literary critic. “The book is the narrative of the Queen’s personal history and it touches so many events and persons that it cannot be summarized in a brief description” (from jacket front flap) and of particular note are the description of contemporary social conditions, the Queen’s attitude to culture and the arts and her relations with her Prime Ministers. Sitwell weaves the story of Victoria through a series of anecdotes, vignettes and extracts from the queen’s own correspondence. £650.00