FRITH, Francis (1822-1898). Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views. Text by Sophia Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole. London, Glasgow and Edinburgh: William Mackenzie, [c.1858-1860].

Elephant 2º (740 x 530mm). Twenty albumen prints (485 x 390mm, or the reverse), seven of these signed and dated 1858 in the negative, mounted on card with printed captions. (The plates with occasional minor spotting or light soiling, one with shallow creasing, one lightly faded, some mounts with marginal dampstaining or light soiling, the title-page and some text leaves with some soiling or spotting, short repaired tear in the foremargin of some leaves, marginal repairs to a few guards or text leaves.) 20th-century green half morocco to style.

FIRST EDITION OF 'ONE OF THE MOST RENOWNED NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHOTOBOOKS' (The Photobook). Of Frith's various publications it is the finest, and it is 'the largest book with the biggest, unenlarged prints ever published' (Gernsheim). It is 'the epitome of Victorian grandiosity. Few publications in the history of the medium are its equal in either presentation or ambition... Frith's views of the Pyramids, in particular, are groundbreaking and became the works for which he is now best known' (Foster et al.) 'The large-view prints in the book have justly become famous... as much for their technical as for their artistic achievement, demonstrating photography's astonishing capacity to render the form and texture of the actual' (The Photobook). Foster, Heiting and Stuhlman, Imagining Paradise, pp. 62-3; Gernsheim, Incunabula of British Photographic Literature, 1839-1875, p.31, no. 130 (illus.); Goldschmidt & Naef, The Truthful Lens, p.200 no.62; Haworth-Booth, The Golden Age of British Photography, 1839-1900, pp.90, 91 (illus.); The Photobook, vol. 1, p. 28.

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