Tab.700.b.3, 1

Imprint: [London, 1875-81.]

Half-leather folio volume, red buckram boards with royal coat of arms stamped in gilt on upper board, measuring 607 x 385 mm, containing 60 carbon prints on card mounts, with lithographed captions and photographers' credit and accompanying letterpress notes on the photographs. Prints 1-24 are printed in carbon by Henry Dixon from negatives made by Alfred and John Bool. While many of the subsequent prints in this and the succeeding volume are uncredited on the mounts, an acknowledgement by Alfred Marks in the letterpress of the second volume states that 'I have also to thank Messrs. Dixon, father and son, who have taken all the negatives from No. 25 onwards. They have always shown the greatest willingness to carry out my intentions, and have invariably been prodigal of pains — often under circumstances of great difficulty — to secure the best attainable results.' In the closing notes to the series, Marks also supplies a brief history of the project, writing that 'The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London originated in the wish of a few friends to preserve a record of the Oxford Arms Inn, threatened with destruction in 1875, and actually demolished a few years later. The project, mentioned in the Times, was so well received that it was found practicable to follow up the first issue, and later on to double the annual number of photographs.' In total the series comprised 120 views, issued annually in groups of six between 1875 and 1878, and then in groups of 12 prints between 1879 and 1886, the final year of the project. The official set of 120 views is supplemented in the following volume by 15 additional unpublished prints.