Untitled historic item (043573)

First edition, first impression.  414pp, with monochrome portrait plate frontispiece, several further black and white plates interleaved in text and one folding genealogical table.  Black cloth boards with gilded motif on the upper panel and gilt titles to the spine.  8vo  Cloth a little tired, gently rounded at corners and spine ends.  Slight toning to text block edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. A biography of the Hesse family in the late 19th and early 20th century centring on Princess Alix Hesse, grand-daughter of Queen Victoria and the last Tsarina of Russia, consort to Tsar Nicholas II until there murder in 1918 and  her brother Prince Ernst [Ernest], the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.  It focuses on the close relationship between the two and the tragedy of the family carrying the haemophilia gene.