10172.d.13, 1

Imprint: London: Lovell Reeve, 5, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 1859.

Octavo, measuring 260 x 175 mm, in modern green buckram binding; xvi, 353, 16pp, frontispiece, folding map. The single stereoscopic view mounted as a frontispiece, also appears as no. 64 in the accompanying series of stereographs issued with this work. Jephson's narrative provides an account of a walking trip in Brittany, undertaken in August-September 1858, and in the first chapter he describes how the idea of accompanying it with photographs arose:'While I was thinking over my scheme and making my preparations, I happened to mention it one day to my neighbour Mr. Lovell Reeve, who was amusing himself in our village with photography. It immediately occured to him that an account of my walk, illustrated with stereoscopic views, might prove interesting...We finally adopted the following plan. He himself, accompanied by a professional photographer [H. Taylor], travelled in a hired carriage, stopping at the principal towns, and making stereographs of any object of interest to be met with on the road, while I took the same, or nearly the same route on foot [the map traces the path of both parties]. It so happened that we occasionally met in the course of our trip, but we were quite independent of each other...The results of our labours in our several distinct departments is now in the reader's hands' (p. 6).Jephson's account is supplemented by a description of the photographic work, in a parallel narrative presented as a running series of long footnotes to the main text. These supply much interesting information on the tribulations of wet collodion photography in the field in the late 1850s, and in the first of these, Reeves gives an account of his equipment and working methods:'Our apparatus consisted of a small double-lens landscape camera, by Ross, a black tent, about four feet square and seven feet high, fitted with table and sink, the whole folding up into a moderate-sized pormanteau, and two boxes of chemicals, one for use and the other for store, with a third box, containing in a small compass a gross of glasses, comprised in six inner boxes of two dozen each. It was decided to confine our operations to the wet collodion process, and to defer varnishing the plates until our return home. Great care was necessary so to economize our hours of travelling, as to have the fairest weather and the best description of light at our disposal while at work with the camera. The first thing to be observed on entering a town or village, was the position the sun would be in, with respect to the objects selected, at the time we should be prepared to photograph them, the points of view to be taken, and the most effective arrangement of foreground; the next consideration was to select a place for our tent in the nearest proximity to two or more views together. The result was, we visited thirty towns and villages within the space of thirty days, pitching our tent about a hundred times, during which period my active photographer, Mr. Taylor, could not have taken fewer than two hundred pictures, from which the present ninety have been selected for publication. Our evenings were fully occupied in looking over the day's harvest, clearing away the day's disorder, and preparing plates and chemicals for the next day's work, though I fear I contributed little myself in this respect.'While Reeves was himself an experienced photographer and the project was a collaborative effort between Taylor and himself, it is clear from his narrative that the main photographic work was carried out by Taylor, with Reeves selecting viewpoints and arranging compositions for him to shoot. In only one instance (no. 68) does Reeves specifically state that he took a particular photograph. For the photographs themselves, see the accompanying volume.