Jump to content

The Photographic History of the Civil War

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Photographic History of the Civil War In Ten Volumes: Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities
"Palisades and chevaux-de-frise guarding Atalanta": This image of Confederate defenses around Atlanta, Georgia, as encountered by Gen. Sherman, appears in Volume 3 of The Photographic History of the Civil War, page 126
AuthorFrancis Trevelyan Miller, Editor-in-Chief; Robert S. Lanier, managing editor
Languageen-us
PublisherThe Review of Reviews Co.
Publication date
1911-1912
Publication placeNew York City, NY, USA
Pages3,600 (app.)
OCLC1467122
973.7
LC Class11011566

The Photographic History of the Civil War In Ten Volumes: Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, as the full title reads, or The Photographic History of the Civil War for short, is a ten-tome compilation of war photography of the American Civil War of 1861–1865. It started being published in June 1911 for the semi-centennial of the beginning of the war, and finished up a year later, though the publisher had expressed the hope to finish up in August 1911 according to their accompanying letter to early customers who had taken out a subscription at a reduced pre-publication retail sales price.[1] Featuring a hitherto unprecedented total of 3,389 photographic images spread over each of the 360-page volumes, a hard copy of the collection weighs in at 42 lb (19 kg), but the work is in the public domain and has since been digitized for use online.[2] The lead editor was Francis Trevelyan Miller, who "conducted a nationwide hunt for old photos,"[3] though most of the actual legwork and discoveries made was done by his assistant Roy M. Mason, a recent Yale University graduate he had specifically hired for the chore, but did not bother to credit as such – though he was in the contents of each volume credited for the "Photograph Descriptions".[4]

A 1988 bibliography retold a bit of the history of the compilation:[5]

Edited by one of the time's leading historians, Francis T. Miller, it first appeared as a series of paperback, magazine-like booklets. A ten-volume, blue-backed set of the complete series appeared in 1911, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the war. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the very first one in the first volume, "Photographing the Civil War," by Henry Wysham Lanier, which both describes period efforts to photograph the war and shows pictures of photographers in the field. Many of the images in this book were obtained from veterans who were able to provide first-hand captions.

The original collection had its constituent volumes executed as embossed blue cloth-bound hardcovers, with text-only dust jackets – essentially a duplicate of each volume's title page. Customers who had ordered their collection at the publisher or local bookstore had their set shipped to them in a wooden transport crate.[6] Publisher The Review of Reviews Co. had also released a 1,000 copy deluxe gold imprinted dark brown leather-bound "Limited Edition", aka the "Semi-Centennial Memorial Edition" set, each individually numbered.[1] The actual printing of the work was performed by The Trow Press, also located in New York City.

The work is considered a "landmark"[7] and "the bible of Civil War photography."[5] It remains a crucial reference resource for historians and is considered a classic work in the field.[3] A 1963 bibliography called it "the great photographic source work for the war...The text has many errors, but the photographs are superb,"[8] with contemporary historian Allan Nevins having stated that the work "still remains the major source for photographs of the Civil War; the greatest single collection of Brady illustrations."[2]

By the early 1950s it was "long out of print" but the "desideratum" of avid Civil War collectors and historians; reprinting was considered but it was determined that it would be an "economic impossibility."[9]

That early assessment notwithstanding though, a first five-volume (each collecting two of the original volumes) facsimile reprint was already published by Thomas Yoseloff, New York in 1957 with an introduction by Henry Steele Commager (OCLC 444833).[8] And as if to underscore that the early 1950s assessment had become completely invalid by then, a second ten-volume facsimile reprint edition was in the same year released by Castle Books, also operating out off New York (OCLC 1118180). Several further reprint editions from a wide variety of publishers have followed suit since, especially after Miller's work had entered the public domain in 1986, which immediately precipitated a reprint edition of the 2-in-1 Yoseloff version a year later by the Blue & Grey Press, a division of Book Sales, Inc., Secaucus, NJ. (OCLC 17757174) As a result, it is not too hard to come by an edition of the set at affordable prices on the second-hand book markets as there are many around; even the original 1911 edition appeared to have been disseminated in large numbers at the time as they are to this day regularly offered on auction sites like eBay.com, albeit at slightly higher prices. Copies of the 1911 release that still have their original dust jackets, not to mention the "Limited Edition", are a lot rarer though – and thus a lot more expensive.

Volume titles:

  1. The Opening Battles.
  2. Two Years of Grim War.
  3. The Decisive Battles.
  4. The Cavalry.
  5. Forts and Artillery.
  6. The Navies.
  7. Prisons and Hospitals.
  8. Soldier Life and Secret Service.
  9. Poetry and Eloquence.
  10. Armies and Leaders.

Emulation: The Image of War, 1861–1865

[edit]
The Image of War, 1861–1865
Edited byWilliam C. Davis, Editor-in-Chief
Bell I. Wiley, Senior Consulting Editor
CountryNew York City, NY, USA
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistory
PublisherDoubleday & Company, Inc.
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (=Tess Press)
Published1981–1984
1994
2000
Media typeprint
No. of books6 (1981-1984)
2 (1994)
1 (2000)

A significant later effort to collect photos of the American Civil War in very similar vein of the 1911 release, was the National Historical Society's 2,768-page The Image of War, 1861–1865 in six volumes under the overall auspices of renowned Civil War historians William C. Davis and Bell I. Wiley as senior editors.[3] The six, 464-496 page each, volume collection was released by Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York from 1981-1984 as oversized hardcover in dust jacket tomes. Aside from including more than a thousand newly discovered photographs since 1911, Davis and Wiley made it their specific mission to correct Roy Mason's numerous erroneous photograph captions of the 1911 edition for their edition – not being a professional historian, original caption writer Mason had taken whatever information the photograph donors had been able or willing to provide him with at face value at the time.[4] On the other hand, the introductory essays that preceded each chapter were entirely unrelated to the original ones of the 1911 edition, but were completely written anew by Davis' and Wiley's staff of historians as the 1911 essays were still very biased and lacking historical objectivity.[10] Besides correcting the historical inaccuracies in the texts, the huge advancements in photographic reproduction print techniques since 1911 was furthered as an additional motivation to have embarked on the project. An explanatory five-page foreword in Volume I that put the work in historical context, particularly in relation to Miller's original work, was written by Davis himself – Wiley had died shortly before the release of Volume I and was eulogized by Davis in his foreword.

The series saw a two-volume Civil War Times Illustrated: Photographic History of The Civil War reprint edition in 1994 by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York (OCLC 30971092), with each 1376-page volume collecting three volumes of the original Doubleday publication. Each tome came with a newly written three-page foreword by Davis (who incidentally, had also been the publisher and main editor of the Civil War Times Illustrated magazine – hence its reference in the reprint title), merely giving the original 1911 edition a cursory mention in passing only this time around, despite the work now carrying the near-same (abbreviated) title as the original. Under its "Tess Press" imprint, the publisher also released an edited and abridged one-volume Civil War: A Complete Photographic History 932-page excerpt hardcover without dust jacket variant edition in 2000 (ISBN 1579124097), featuring only the photographs and their captions, but not the historical essays.

Volume titles of The Image of War, 1861–1865
Doubleday & Company, Inc. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Vol. Title Date & ISBN Vol. Title Date & ISBN
I Shadows of the Storm July 14, 1981, ISBN 0385154666 1 Fort Sumter to Gettysburg January 10, 1994, ISBN 1884822088
II The Guns of '62 January 12, 1982, ISBN 0385154674
III The Embattled Confederacy July 27, 1982, ISBN 0385154682
IV Fighting for Time March 15, 1983, ISBN 0385182805 2 Vicksburg to Appomattox January 10, 1994, ISBN 1884822096
V The South Besieged September 21, 1983, ISBN 0385182813
VI The End of an Era August 14, 1984, ISBN 0385182821

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b "The Photographic History of the Civil war-Semi-Centennial Memorial Edition". AbeBooks.com.
  2. ^ a b "The Photographic History of the Civil War". CivilWarDigital.com.
  3. ^ a b c Boney, F. N. (1982). "Review of The Image of War: 1861–1865. Volume I: Shadows of the Storm". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 90 (4): 513–514. ISSN 0042-6636. JSTOR 4248601.
  4. ^ a b William C., Davis; Wiley, Bell I. (July 14, 1981). Shadows of the Storm: The Image of War, 1861-1865, Vol. 1. New York City, NY, USA: Doubleday. p. 464. ISBN 0385154666. (pp. 10-14)
  5. ^ a b Katcber, Philip (1988). "History, Photography & the Civil War: A critical bibliography". Military Images. 10 (1): 25–27. ISSN 1040-4961. JSTOR 44032074.
  6. ^ "The Photographic History of the Civil War". AbeBooks.com.; "The Photographic History of the Civil War". TheFirstEdition.com.
  7. ^ Holcomb, David B. (2022). "The rise and fall of Union spy chief: SCOUNDREL Lafayette Curry Baker". Military Images. 40 (3 (221)): 59–68. ISSN 1040-4961. JSTOR 27141364.
  8. ^ a b Newman, Ralph G.; Long, E. B. (1963). "A Basic Civil War Library". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 56 (2): 391–411. ISSN 0019-2287. JSTOR 40190648.
  9. ^ Harwell, Richard Barksdale (1953). "Review of Divided We Fought: A Pictorial History of the War, 1861–1865". The Journal of Southern History. 19 (2): 239–240. doi:10.2307/2955027. ISSN 0022-4642. JSTOR 2955027.
  10. ^ The release of the controversial 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation was at that time only four years away, which became a hotly criticized movie ever since for its bigotry, white supremacy overtones, revisionism, and sentimental melodramatics, aspects that had all already percolated into many of the 1911 edition texts.
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Photographic History of The Civil War.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Photographic_History_of_the_Civil_War&oldid=1246686253"