[Rarebooks] fs Fox Talbot. Pencil of Nature. Da Capo Edition

[Robert Azzi]

Offering for sale:

The Pencil of Nature, by William Henry Fox Talbot. New York: Da Capo Press.
1969. Facsimile edition: First edition thus. Small folio. Gilt decorated
maroon cloth covered book. No bumped corners, no fading, no marks or
writing.  As new in a dust jacket with no tears, chips, edge wear, creases,
bumps, etc. Book is totally unmarked. A beautiful copy with tipped-in
plates, none which are marked or creased in any way. With the facsimile of
the original prospectus tipped in front. It is price-clipped.

>From the new introduction by Newhall: "'The Pencil of Nature' is a classic.
It is a collection of paper photographs made by the inventor of the process,
William Henry Fox Talbot, with his account of the discovery and prediction
of uses to which it might be put. It is the first book illustrated with
photographs and the first mass production of photographs. It stands in
relation to the history of photography as does the Gutenberg Bible to
printing".

The front flap of the dust jacket states, "The Pencil of Nature is the
dramatic story of the discovery of the negative-positive photographic
process, written by the inventor of that method. Working independently of
Louis Daguerre, Talbot arrived at a technique which rendered the
daguerreotype obsolete by making possible the mass printing and publication
of photographs. This exciting account of Talbot's researches - from his
tentative and primitive attempts at preparing 'light sensitive' paper to his
development of those sophisticated procedures which yielded the twenty-four
photographs he used to illustrate 'The Pencil of Nature' - describes his
experiments and reveals the breakthroughs which led him to the earliest
realization of photography as we know it today. Originally published in
1844, in a limited number of copies, 'The Pencil of Nature' is now an
exceedingly rare and invaluable document. Only twenty-four copies are known
to exist, most being incomplete or containing badly faded prints of the
photographs. This Da Capo Press edition is an exact facsimile of the
original; it contains Talbot's outline of his investigations, all
twenty-four photographs (reproduced from the best extant prints), and his
notes on each individual photograph. In addition, Beaumont Newhall, Director
of the George Eastman House and widely acknowledged to be the world's
foremost authority on the history of photography, has provided a new
introduction to this edition."

I cannot imagine a finer copy of this edition.

$1450.00 postpaid and insured in the Unites States.
$1515.00 postpaid and insured internationally.
Subject to prior sale.

Robert Azzi
Exeter NH
1.603.264.6564