A Hindi translation of Queen Victoria's published book, Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands from 1848 to 1861, her personal account of the royal family's trips to Balmoral in Scotland. This translation was made by the Maharajah of Benares, Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh (1822-89) who gave this presentation copy to Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, during his Tour of India in 1875 to pass on to Queen Victoria on his return to England. The book was originally bound with an inlaid hard-stone cover, recorded as made in Agra from designs supplied by the Maharajah himself. The illuminations are credited to 'an artist at the Fort in Ramnagar'.

The book opens with a painted composite photograph of the Maharajah presenting it to Queen Victoria. This is likely to have been made by a member of a family of artists from Patna patronised by the Mahrajah, the second generation of which took up photography in the 1870s. The Maharajah's nephew and successor, Prabhu Narayan Singh, adapted the same image when he presented an album of photographs to Queen Victoria (see RCIN 2907350).

Queen Victoria recorded the book's arrival in England in her jounral: 'My Book, translated into Hindustani, beautifully illuminated, containing a painting of me, by a native artist, receiving the present from the Maharajah of Benares, bound in inlaid marble, is very curious & really beautiful'