Unpublished, intimate correspondence between the Tsar and his mistress

Alexander II, Emperor of Russia (1818-1881) / Catherine Dolgorukova, Princess Yurievskaya (1847-1922). Autograph correspondence comprising 440 letters by Alexander II and 138 letters by Catherine Dolgorukova.

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The most substantial collection of unpublished letters by Tsar Alexander II ever offered: the extensive correspondence between Alexander II and Catherine Dolgorukova, preserving the intimate written record of one of the most consequential private relationships of the late Romanov court in a sequence of extraordinary scale and continuity.

Spanning the years from summer 1866, when their affair had just begun, to the end of 1879, shortly before their marriage, the archive comprises more than 2,300 pages and follows the relationship from its early, clandestine phase through the years in which Dolgorukova became the emperor’s constant companion. The group includes 119 letters from Alexander II written between 19 August 1866 and 1 January 1867 and again in August and September 1868, 138 letters from Dolgorukova written between 18 August and 30 December 1866, and a further run of 321 letters from Alexander II written throughout 1879.

More than a private exchange, the correspondence documents the emotional underside of a reign otherwise defined by reform, crisis, and political violence. Alexander II is remembered above all for the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, yet after 1866 his rule increasingly unfolded under the pressure of reaction and revolutionary terrorism; these letters belong to that decisive final phase of his life and government.

Alexander had married Princess Marie of Hesse in 1841, and the couple had eight children together. Though the marriage did not end until Marie's death in 1880, Alexander was known for his infidelity, and after ascending to the throne in 1855, he began taking a series of mistresses. The final and most important of these mistresses was Catherine ("Katia"), whom Alexander had first met in 1859 while visiting the estate of the eleven-year old girl's father. Years later, the tsar and Katia met again on an official visit to her school. In December 1865, the pair began meeting for daily walks, and they are believed to have consummated their affair in July 1866. Less than two months after the death of his wife, Alexander morganatically married Katia.

The survival of so large and coherent a body of unpublished material is of exceptional evidentiary value. While numerous love letters between Tsar Alexander II and Princess Catherine have appeared on the market during the last decades, such a large sequential collection featuring letters from both parties has never before been offered. This collection is almost certainly the largest remaining in private hands.