10663.a.36, 1

Imprint: Paris. Disdéri. Boulevard des Italiens, 8. Dollingen. Rue Vivien, 48. Et chez les principaux libraires.

Quarter leather 12mo, brown cloth boards, measuring 150 x 120 mm and containing 34 carte-de-visite portraits pasted down on guard-mounted card, with accompanying letterpress biographical memoir for each subject. This series of portraits was issued by Disdéri in collaboration with the editor Zacharias Dollingen between 1860 and 1862. Advertisements on the back of the wrappers for later issues state that two portraits were issued each week, forming four annual 'volumes de luxe,' each containing 25 portraits. The British Library copy comprises a total of 125 livraisons (126 prints) bound in four volumes (apparently unrelated to the 'volumes de luxe' as offered by Disdéri). There appears to be a good deal of variation in the portraits found in different copies of the work, those in the Bibliothèque Nationale examined by Elizabeth Anne McCauley containing a total of 127 texts and a greater number of portraits, since in some cases more than one portrait of a sitter was issued with the text (the single example of this in the British Library copy is number 13, which comprises two portraits of Napoléon III). It has not been determined precisely when the series commenced publication, although the letterpress for all parts from 102 onwards is dated April 1862. This would imply that the series started towards the end of 1860. For a fuller discussion of the series, see Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 'A. A. E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph' (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1985), pp. 55, 61-84.