Lost Splendour, Prince Felix Youssoupoff. Published by The Folio Society, 1996. Translated from the French by Ann Green and Nicolas Katkoff; introduction by Count Nikolai Tolstoy. 8vo up to 9½” tall., 252pp.with black and white plates. Quarter purple cloth over pictorial boards. Housed in a grey slipcase. In fine, unread condition, in fine slipcase.
The fascinating first-person account of the cross-dressing prince who poisoned Rasputin with rose cream cakes laced with cyanide and spiked Madeira. Felix Youssoupoff led the life of a grand seigneur in the days before the Russian Revolution. Married to the niece of Czar Nicholas II, he could observe at close range the rampant corruption and intrigues of the imperial court, which culminated in the rise to power of the sinister monk Rasputin. Finally, impelled by patriotism and his love for the Romanoff dynasty, which he felt was in danger of destroying itself and Russia, he killed Rasputin in 1916 with the help of the Grand Duke Dimitri and others. More than any other single event, this deed helped to bring about the cataclysmic upheaval that ended in the advent of the Soviet regime.
