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A spectacular album containing 65 views and scenes in Northern India at the close of the nineteenth century, with superb images of Benares, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi and Mussoorie. together with several fine photographs of Indian workers, notably in the tea plantations of Chaubatia. Included is a series of haunting images of the ruins of the imperial residency at Lucknow, which was largely destroyed in the Indian rebellion of 1857, and a view of the site of the massacre at Cawnpore. The first two photographs in the album are signed in ink by G.W. Lawrie and given the style, period and geography of the remainder it is likely they are also by the studio of this prolific Scottish-born photographer. Six final photographs are of Port Said, Egyptians, Armenians and are Sudanians, of which some after French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux.
1. Juggernaut Cr. Mysore. 2. A Mysore temple. 3. Marble rocks. Jubbulpore. 4. Indore. Tomb of the late Mahraja [Tukojirao Holkar II]. 5. View from Cheena. ‘Naini Tal’. 6. Naini Tal. 7. Loucun. Naini Tal. 8. Naini Tal – showing lake. 9. Group of hill coolies. 10. Naini Tal group of hill women. 11. A picturesque bit on the road from Ranikhet. 12. Grass cutters. Chowbattia. 13. Group of women sorting tea. Chowbattia. 14. Tea sorting. Chowbattia. 15. Simla. 16. Bridge of boats. Benares. 17. The great mosque of Aurenzebe [Aurangzebe]. Benares. 18. Benares. Cremation Ghal. Showing Hindu burning their dead. 19. Buddhist carving. Benares. 20. Golden temple. Benares. 21. Bailey Guard Gate. Lucknow. 22. The Residency. Lucknow. 23. The Residency Ruins. Lucknow. 24. The Residency. Lucknow. 25. Lucknow. The Residency showing the Shannon’s guns. 26. Interior view of Fort. Lucknow. 27. Lucknow. The great Emambara & Mosque. 28. View from clock tower. Lucknow. 29. A gateway. Lucknow. 30. A gateway. Lucknow [untitled, another view]. 31. The Hossainabad. Lucknow. 32. Hossainabad Emambara. Lucknow. 33. Wingfield Park. Lucknow. 34. Lucknow. The first King of Oudh, Mausoleum. 35. Dilkoosha Palace ruins. Lucknow. 36. Dilkoosha Palace. Lucknow. 37. Sadut Ali Shah’s Mausoleum. Lucknow. 38. Ornamental Gate. Lucknow. 39. Memorial Well. Cawnpore. 40. Suttee Chowra Ghat. Scene of the Massacre. Cawnpore. 41. Gateway of Taj. Agra. 42. The Marble Taj. Agra. 43. The Taj from the river. Agra. 44. Agra. The marble screen around the tomb inside Taj. 45. Motte Musjid Mosque. Agra. 46. The Mausoleum of Akbar. Secundra [Sikandra]. 47. Elephant in masonry. Delhi. 48. The Cashmere Gate. Delhi. 49. Arhai-din-kar-jhopra temple. Ajmere. 50. Ancient carved pillars, in the fortress. Gwalior. 51. The Mall. Mussoorie. 52. A bit of bazaar. Mussoorie. 53. General view. Mussoorie. 54. Kempty Falls. Mussoorie. 55. General view. Mussoorie. 56. The snow. Cashmere. 57. Cashmere. 58. Cashmere. 59 & 60. Indian Servants (2 smaller images 150 × 110 mm). 61 & 62. Indian Servants (2 smaller images 150 × 110 mm). 63 & 64. Indian Servants (2 images 150 × 110 mm). 64 & 65. Goorkha. Indian Soldiers (2 images 150 × 110 mm). 66. Port Said. 67. Armenian Girl. 68. Armenians. 69. Egyptian water carrier (after Arnoux). 70. Egyptians (after Arnoux). 71. Soudaniens. (after Arnoux).

A series of eighteen superb photographs of processions of Indian princes and soldiers at the Delhi Durbar. The 1903 Durbar was held to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India --- the King and Queen did not attend but were represented by the Duke of Connaught and the Viceroy Lord Curzon (both appearing in these photographs). Many of the Indian princes rode on elephants (depicted in six of the photographs here) and were dressed in their finest costumes and jewels. Three of the prints depict the Durbar amphitheatre and Viceroy’s pavilion forming a panorama of connected images. The Durbar was also the occasion for the opening of the Delhi exhibition, the biggest display of Indian arts and crafts hitherto assembled, and the exhibition building is the subject of two of the prints here.

Photographer Sidney Herbert Dagg (1862-1930) moved to India in 1891 and worked as an assistant to G.W.Lawrie (G. W. Lawrie & Co) before establishing his own firm, with offices at Mussoorie and Allahabad.

A superb survey of turn-of-the century British domestic architecture by an important French photographer who used cyanotype to notable effect. These examples of seaside ‘cottages’ in East Kent and Sussex depicts an array of then recently constructed high quality houses, a good number of which survive. Broadly within the Arts and Crafts tradition, the houses fuse a variety of older English vernacular styles with modern innovations, notably in the range of moulded and cut bricks and tiles.

Albert Lévy (1847-1931) was both a pioneering and prolific architectural photographer, unusual for his time in working on both sides of the Atlantic, with studios in Paris and New York. Characteristically, his collections were issued as cyanotypes printed directly from the original glass negatives. His collections included numerous sequences of French, British and American buildings of the Gilded Age, but are now very rare indeed. Jisc locates no UK copies. FirstSearch locates US copies at Columbia, Princeton and Lawrence Technological University only.

First edition of a rare lithographed work, pseudonymously issued, but the artist/author James O’Hara is identified in this copy with a contemporary manuscript key. The album is in the form of a graphic narrative recording a yachting cruise from Ireland to Iceland by a group of friends aboard Captain Henry’s Maroquita (a fine two-masted schooner wrecked in Holyhead harbour in 1860). While the initial scenes depict the voyage out (with predictible sea-sickness) most of the images are Icelandic vignettes, with local characters and landmarks. One shows a member of the party photographing geysers with a tripod camera — surely an early record of photography in Iceland.

The manuscript key identifies the four sailors, ‘Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown’ as James O’Hara, Captain Sandes, Mr. Lane Fox and Captain Henry, ‘proprietor of the yacht Maroquita’ respectively. The National Library of Ireland copy bears the imprint ‘Wm. Robertson’. WorldCat locates only the copy in the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne, which has the imprint of Robertson of Sackville Street, Dublin at the foot of the title-page (where ours is blank). There is also a copy in the National Library Ireland (also with Robertson imprint). No copy found in the National Library of Iceland Catalogue.

First edition of a pioneering work in the field of forensic medicine, the graphic images depict numerous conditions resulting from homicidal and suicidal injuries. The grisly and powerful photographs show skull and bone fractures, the impact of gunshot wounds, burns, injuries caused by stabbings, the effects of hanging and so on. Each set of 50 plates is accompanied by a booklet providing details of each image and the important features from the legal-medico cases from which the photographs have been obtained. Heidtmann, Bibliographie der Photographie: Deutschsprachige Publikationen, 14062. OCLC locates 4 US copies and no UK copies.

Compiled in the town of Popovo in the wine-growing region of North Eastern Bulgaria, this souvenir album was compiled by a federation of three local temperance societies and given to one ‘Monsieur Dr. P. Legrain’. Most of the photographic postcards depict society outings, with large groups of men, women and children usually in outdoor settings in all seasons (including what appear to be very harsh winters). Several of the photographs were taken at harvest time, with copious bunches of grapes in evidence. The context of the presentation is not immediately obvious, though may be apparent in the three long inscriptions in Bulgarian accompanied by the purple inkstamps of each of the societies.