1854.c.9

Imprint: Glasgow: William Collins, Buchanan Street. MDCCCLX [1860].

Folio volume (rebacked and conserved 1997), measuring, 385 x 285 mm, red cloth with blind-embossed decoration, title stamped in gilt on upper board and in blind on lower board; edges gilt. The work contains a brief preface, 12 albumen print views mounted one to a page (recto only), with title and publisher's credit beneath image. The photographer's credit, reading 'Cramb, Photo. 1860', also appears on the mount, at bottom left of each print. A number of the prints are also signed and numbered in the negative. Each photograph is followed by one page of descriptive letterpress. A letter from W. H. Sewell, dated 28 November 1881, offering the book for sale to the British Museum for one guinea, is also inserted in the work.In his preface to the work, Buchanan writes, 'A peculiar fascination belongs to the Holy Land. The fact that it was the cradle of the Christian faith, and the scene of nearly all the great events which the Bible records, must ever invest it with an undying interest to every Christian mind. Hence the ever-increasing demand for information regarding it. To meet this demand travellers of late years have done a good deal by the pen, and artists have done not a little by the pencil. Hitherto, however, not much use has been made, in illustrating the sacred scenes of Palestine, of the marvellous modern art of Photography ... What those who cannot themselves visit the Holy Land desire, above all things, to have, is something which they can rely upon as an exact and faithful representation of it ... This desideratum Photography alone can, with absolute certainty, supply. To realize it is the design of the present work...'Cramb's own account of the trip, 'Palestine in 1860, or a photographer's journal of a visit to Jerusalem,' was published in the 'British Journal of Photography' in 1861