[Rarebooks] fa: Howitt - RUINED ABBEYS AND CASTLES OF GREAT BRITAIN 1862 (Early Photography)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 15. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yckfdew5

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

William and Mary Howitt: Ruined Abbeys and Castles of Great Britain. The Photographic Illustrations by Bedford, Sedgfield, Wilson, Fenton, and others. London: A. W. Bennett, 1862. Presumed first edition. Small 4to (23 cm) in original lavender cloth with beveled edges, ornately decorated in blind and gilt, photographic inserts on the front and rear boards, all page edges gilt; [6], 228 pp.; with 27 mounted albumen photo prints.

Binding sunned, stained and faded, short tear to the cloth at the top of the front joint; front inner hinge cracked and the front endpaper, title-page and list of illustrations detached and loose; text block shaken with a few page-gatherings protruding a bit; dampstain to the upper page-edges, faint at first but becoming more prominent in the last third of the book and just touching the corners of the last two plates; spotting to the earlier and later leaves; early owner's ink inscription on the front paste-down.

An early work of travel photography and purportedly the first book to have an albumen photographic print on its cover. As the publisher states in the preface: "It appears to us a decided advance in the department of Topography, thus to unite it to Photography. The reader is no longer left to suppose himself at the mercy of the imaginations, the caprices, or the deficiencies of artists, but to have before him the genuine presentment of the object under consideration."