Royal Tour of India 1905-06 by the Prince & Princess of Wales in the de luxe binding

Reed, Stanley: THE ROYAL TOUR IN INDIA. A Record of the Tour of T.R.H. The Prince and Princess of Wales in India and Burma, from November 1905 to March 1906. Bennett Coleman & Co [Bombay] 1906, quarto, 1st Edition. In the maroon leather and gold de-luxe binding.

Photogravure portraits of Prince & Princess printed on card before the title page [rather darkened & with slight insect damage], numerous photo illustrations [many full page and including portraits of rulers], sketch route map, xxiv, 510pp, 3pp un-numbered Appendix B. Original maroon full leather gilt with very decorative bevelled boards, minor scuffing to the to edges of boards and a little minor damage to head and tail of spine, internally clean with just a single insect hole in the outer margin affecting page 479 onwards.  A very well illustrated work entirely printed on fine quality glazed art paper, all edges gilt. The illustrations are taken from photographs by Raja Deen Dayal & Sons and by Bourne and Shepherd. This important tour visited Bombay, Indore, Udaipur, Jaipur, Bikanir, Lahore, Peshawar, The Khyber, Rawalpindi, Jammu, Amritsar, Delhi,Agra, Gwalior, Lucknow, Calcutta, Rangoon, Madras, Mysore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Benares, Aligarh, Quetta, Chaman & Karachi. As well as views of tour there are numerous architectural views and portraits of princes and rulers, officials, etc. A most useful work of record for Imperial India. The tour took place 30 years after the visit of the Prince’s father (who was later Edward VII). The Prince and Princess enjoyed their trip and were to visit India again for a Coronation tour in 1911 when the Prince became George V. This volume was followed by the author by a very similar work on the later 1911/12 visit. a very heavy volume which offers suffers much more than this one, the portraits of the Prince & Princess being on card seem almost designed to be removed and often have been.  dec2/4

Note on editions of this book: The standard issue of this book comes in a blue cloth binding [one can be seen elsewhere in this category. This de luxe is bound to appeal especially to Indian Princes and other wealthy Indians and Europeans. The text and illustrations are the same as in the blue edition but printed on thicker paper so that, although the pagination is identical, this edition is 2½ ins thick compared with the 1½ ins of the standard binding. Another more glamorous edition in this binding exists and that one has coloured plates of the Princes and a few other figures. Both the de-luxe editions are now hard to find.