Nineteenth-Century Photography : An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1879

Mansell Publishing Ltd, London, first UK edition, 1990. Cloth, 4to, 29 cm,. xv, 962 pp. Nearly 21,000 entries. A selective but vast annotated bibliography containing nearly 21,000 references to English-language books and periodical articles published from 1839 to 1990 about or involving photography from 1839 to 1879. Coverage includes books, manuals, and pamphlets about photography as well as books on any subject that are illustrated with photographs, or even by other processes when the original images were derived from photographs. Coverage of periodicals and journals is exceptionally strong: Johnson surveyed general-interest periodicals as well as specialist journals on photography published from 1839 to 1879, including journals of news and culture, popularizing scientific journals, art journals, and journals of several scientific or artistic societies, all of which reported on photography and its growing impacts on the culture of the period, together with illustrated weekly newspapers, illustrated monthly journals, and regional publications, which all actively used photography as part of their editorial practice. Thus in addition to articles about photography, the bibliography contains examples of photographic practice during the period under consideration. Johnson aimed through his selections and his careful annotations to show aspects of an individual photographers' lives and careers, the phases of activity within a medium, patterns of scholarship and directions of critical interest, so that his work should be readable and provide a real sense of the historical development of the subject. Arrangement is by subject classification, with most entries appearing under a heading for the individual artist or author. Other subject headings are generally quite broad, including the following main categories (some of which are subdivided by area or year) : Bibliography; Prehistory; History (General and By Country); Equipment; Cameras; Lenses; Solar cameras; Astronomical photography; Color photography; Exhibitions; Magic lantern photography; Microphotography; Organizations and societies; Photojournalism and magazines; Photomechanical reproduction; Stereoscopic photography. Bibliographic information for each entry is quite detailed so that for magazine articles it typically provides the author, the title, the name of the publication, both the volume and number for the journal, the full date, the full pagination, and the number of reproductions published If original photographs were tipped into the book or journal, this is noted. Often, and particularly where the title is uninformative out of its original context, Johnson includes a brief descriptive comment about the reference, occasionally excerpting directly from articles that contained information he considered particularly interesting. An extremely valuable reference. Tiny nick to head of spine and trifling marks to spine, frontispiece slightly creased, otherwise Very Good.