1764.e.5, 1

Imprint: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., London, 1888-89.

Issued 12 monthly parts, from July 1888 to June 1889, each containing 3 prints with descriptive biographical letterpress. 418 x 333 mm; prints mounted on stiff card on linen guards within tinted cream border, with facsimile signature of sitter beneath image, letterpress title and photographer's credit reading, 'Walery, Photographer to the Queen. 164, Regent Street, London..' Wrappers for each part bound in at end of volume. A short introductory note to the series outlines the ambitions of the project: 'A great country, on which 'the sun never sets,' and which from century to century has produced the greatest statesmen, orators, and men of science; a country where the fairer sex, too, have a well-founded claim to the respectful consideration of their contemporaries, ought to have a Gallery of its Celebrities, in order to preserve to posterity the likenesses and the records of those to whom the English people owe the high position they occupy among nations. This publication has therefore been started with the idea that the likenesses obtainable from one of the best photographic in the world, with text furnished by one of the best known writers of the metropolis, and produced in the most perfect typographic style at so reasonable a cost that each separate part of the publication will seem worth the price asked for the whole, must meet with immediate and liberal support. As to the text, truth, justice, and impartiality will be the guiding principles, flattery and malice alike being excluded, although occasionally humour may be introduced.' Each issue appeared monthly at a price of two-shillings and sixpence and was well-received by the press, The Daily Telegraph, for instance, considering that the 'The whole production is good in style and execution, the photographs are soft in tone, and the letterpress bright and clever.'