Photograph album

Archive offers glimpse into the golden age of small-scale publishing when tiny print runs were the norm

A huge collection of black and white, celluloid negatives was described by the Lincoln auction house that offered them as a ‘magnificent, massive, eclectic mix of subjects’.

A fascinating personal collection of items relating to Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) that sold in a south London auction included what are among the last photographs ever taken of her.

An impressive result emerged at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood on December 5 when a travel album titled The Ramblings and Adventures of an Indian Officer was knocked down at £135,000.

The opening two lots of Gorringe’s (25% buyer’s premium) Fine Art & Antiques sale on October 3 were leather-bound albums of photographs from British India.

A photo album containing 60 cabinet card photos of late 19th and early 20th century circus acts was among the highlights of an August 27 sale in Sarasota, Florida, conducted by Freedom Auction Company in conjunction with the Circus Historical Society.

Just as stereoscope images became a Victorian collecting craze, another notable photographic fad of the era was the carte de visite

As timing goes, the sale date for an album of handwritten letters, photographs and ephemera related to Sophia Duleep Singh (1876-1948) could not have been much better.

In its earliest days flying was frequently lethal, in and out of combat.

A rediscovered album of 19 cartes de visite portrait photographs documenting Charles Darwin’s changing visage over three decades sold for £126,000.

Henry Lee Shuttleworth (1882- 1960) worked for many years in the Indian Civil Service.

Polar material in a travel and exploration themed sale held on March 2 by Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) produced a bid of £24,000 for a letter that Robert Falcon Scott wrote to a friend, Lady Goodrich, about his planned British Antarctic Expedition of 1910.

The latest Photographica sale at Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) included this rare set of 'China Through the Stereoscope'.

A couple of Winston Churchill letters were among the more successful lots in a second selection from a History in Manuscript collection* formed over the last 20 years and offered at Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

A cache of material related to the influential Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) and her family sold for close to £50,000 at Lawrences of Crewkerne.

The photograph seen at bottom right is a group of Chinese men convicted of spying and awaiting “…execution by Imperialists”.

First work in photographer’s classic coverage of China and its people makes £48,000.

Complete with 16 tissue-guarded photogravure plates in the original, stylish decorative cloth binding, one of 200 standard copies of Peter Henry Emerson’s famous Marsh Leaves of 1895 was the star turn in a recent Norfolk sale.