Delhi Durbar and Royal Tour of the King & Queen, 1911-12. De luxe edition with coloured plates

Reed, Stanley, Special Correspondent of the Times of India : THE KING AND QUEEN IN INDIA. A Record of the Visit of Their Imperial Majesties the King Emperor and Queen Empress to India, from December 2nd, 1911 to January 10th, 1912. Bennett Coleman & Co ., the Times of India Office [Bombay] 1912 1st edition 4to [12¼ x 10¼ ins]. The de luxe edition.

Frontispieces of coloured portraits of the King & Queen, folding 4 page panorama of the camp, folding 8 page panorama of the great Durbar [loose from binding but not damaged],  8 [of 13] tipped in coloured portraits, numerous other illustrations [mainly from good photographs], xviii, 409pp.   Original ornamental blue leather gilt, rubbing to edges, damage to head and tail of spine, all edges gilt, some old private library marks, occasional small grubby marks but better the average for this scarce edition. Other copies we have handled have had most of the coloured plates missing. This copy lacks the one of the Maharaja pf Bikaner but trains the others – the Viceroy Lord Harding and the rulers of Baroda, Kashmir, Sirohi, Udaipur, Indore, Jodhpur, and Maharaj Kunwar Sarup Singh. A few other portraits are missing [Hyderabad (2). Udaipur, Gwalior, Bikaner].  A wonderful record of the event, with good detail of the Imperial Tour which took place at either side of the Delhi Durbar itself and included the King’s shooting expedition in the Nepal Terai. The appendices include government papers regarding the Durbar, an explanation of the plans from the new capital in Delhi, and a full list of The Durbar Honours, which includes Personal Salutes [to Gwalior, Nepal, Barwani, Sheh & Mokalla, Bhor, and Kanker]; the Imperial Order of the Crown of India [to the Marchioness of Crewe. the Begum of Bhopal, and the Maharani of Bhavnagar; numerous awards of GCSI, KCSI, CSI, GCIE, KCIE, CIE, KCVO [to Sir Arthur McMahon, Sir Partab Singh, & the Nawab of Rampur], KCVO, CVO. etc., Knighthoods, Kaisar-i-Hind Medal. King’s Police Medal. ISO. dec13/1

This edition has a slightly larger page size than the standard version [a copy can be found elsewhere in this category] and contains some 60 more pages. Although there are a few missing coloured plates we have never come across a complete example. It was very much designed to appeal to the princely families of India and it seems that many of the purchasers removed at least one of the portraits. The very large panorama is often also removed. As recently as 2019 I saw a copy offered for sale in Mumbai for a higher price than I charge for the book. Our illustration of that panorama shows only the central 4 pages of the whole.