Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War

Book Description

Washington: Philp & Solomons, [1865]. 2 volumes, oblong folio. (12 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches). Mounted on guards throughout, tinted lithographic titles with lettering within integral pictorial borders, 100 original albumen silver print photographs (each approximately 7 x 9 inches) each mounted on card within a lithographed frame with letterpress caption, each image accompanied by a page of letterpress description, text leaves with occasional small expert repairs and occasional light creasing. Original publisher's black morocco, the covers with decorative border tooled in gilt and blind, the upper covers with centrally-placed title and publisher's monogram blocked in gilt, the flat spines divided into six compartments by pairs of gilt fillets, with expertly restored joints, endpapers replaced, gilt edges, contained in two modern black morocco-backed cloth-covered boxes, spines gilt. A handsome copy of the earliest issue of this legendary and very rare photographically-illustrated book, with clean and crisp prints of some of the most graphic scenes of the Civil War. One of the most important of American books, and a monument to early American photography. This work, the most famous collection of Civil War photographs, was published in an edition of no more than 200 sets. It includes many of the most celebrated and recognizable images of the war: "Burial Party, Cold Harbor," "A Harvest of Death," "Field Where General Reynolds Fell, Battle of Gettysburg," "President Lincoln on Battle-Field of Antietam," etc. The photographs are organized chronologically, beginning in 1862 and ending with the dedication of the monument at Bull Run to commemorate the Union soldiers who had died there. Unlike Brady, who was in the habit of placing his name on images made by his field operators, Gardner specifically credits each image to the particular photographer responsible, shedding light on the work of some of the most distinguished American photographers of the day, including Timothy O'Sullivan, William Pywell, D.B. Woodbury, David Knox, Barnard & Gibson, J. Reekie, and others. These images form perhaps the most important pictorial record of the Civil War, spanning the length of the conflict, from the aftermath of action at Centerville and Manassas in 1862, to the dedication of the monument at Bull Run in June 1865. "The photographs show the terrain of the battles (Bull Run, Manassas, Harper's Ferry, Gettysburg, etc.), encampments, headquarters of the troops, officers and enlisted men, soldiers in drill formation and in the field under fire, and the ruins left after the battles. Limitations in the process of photography did not permit work during the battles; the photographs are remarkable documents of the circumstantial evidence for war. Recent investigations suggest that not every site was recorded just as found by the photographer but that a certain amount of rearranging, including actually moving the corpses, was undertaken in some situations. The captions, conceived in poetic rather than terse journalistic terms, suggest that the authors saw their work as having the human significance we see in many of the photographs of today" (Goldschmidt & Naef). Gardner's work was published by the Washington, D.C. firm of Philp & Solomons, and carried the rather hefty price of $150. The one hundred photographs that were included were selected from a collection of over 3,000 negatives, and the lithographic title-pages were designed by Alfred R. Waud (though designated A.R. Ward on the title-pages). The publishers issued two slightly separate versions of the book, one in 1865, and the other in 1866. This copy is from the earlier issue, with the caption "Incidents of the War" printed on each mount. This caption was removed for the 1866 issue. Goldschmidt & Naef Truthful Lens 68; Howes G64; Julie L. Mellby "Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War" in Princeton University Library Chronicle (Winter, 2006), pp.435-40; Nevins II,p.14; Sabin 26635

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