“THE GRANDFATHER OF CIVIL WAR HISTORIES”: ILLUSTRATED WITH OVER A THOUSAND BRADY PHOTOGRAPHS, IN SCARCE PUBLISHER’S THREE-QUARTER MOROCCO

MILLER, Francis Trevelyan, editor. The Photographic History of the Civil War. New York: Review of Reviews, 1911. Ten volumes. Quarto, publisher's three-quarter navy morocco gilt rebacked with elaborately gilt-decorated spines laid down, original pictorial endpapers, top edges gilt. $7800.

First edition of Miller’s famous and important 10-volume photographic history of the Civil War, containing “thousands of scenes photographed 1861-65, with text by many special authorities,” bound in the very scarce publisher’s morocco-gilt.

"This mammoth work… a necessary part of any Civil War library," contains contributions from over 39 eminent individuals, including academicians, President William H. Taft, and veteran officers of both Confederate and Union forces, many of whom wrote from personal experience. A number of the photographs, previously unpublished, are from the collections of private individuals, including the extensive Eldridge Collection of Mathew Brady Civil War photographs, "easily five times larger than that of any contemporary" (Everitt). "Zealous in their work, often regardless of danger, and at all times handicapped by the vexing difficulties of the photographic process of that day," Brady and his assistants "carried their cameras to every scene that promised an interesting picture," capturing "scenes of actual conflict, others of places devastated by gunfire, of troops on the march or in bivouac, and of individual officers and men" (ANB). First signature of Volume X supplied with leaves from another copy. Volume X is second issue, with "2-Ed" in the bottom margin of page 323. Eicher 771. Nicholson, 516.

Interiors fine, minor soiling to a few cloth boards, expert repairs to spine ends.