Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force
Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force
Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force
Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force

[GRAHAM, Robert Blackall]. Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force, 1886-87. By a Cavalry Officer.

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[GRAHAM, Robert Blackall]. Photographic Illustrations, with a Description of Mandalay & Upper Burmah Expeditionary Force, 1886-87. By a Cavalry Officer. Birmingham, A. Pumphrey, Photographic Publisher, [1887].

Large 4to. Original red publisher's cloth with bevelled edges, spine and front cover lettered in gilt; pp. [viii, title printed in red and black, one leaf with ornamental centre-piece, preface, list of photographs, lithographic plan of Mandalay and explanation on opposite page], 59 mounted albumen prints (c. 100 x 133 mm) on thin card, ruled in red with descriptive text underneath; restored rodent damage to 7 cm along hinges; cloth minimally marked and faded; warping to cards due to mounting, as usual, light offsetting from endpapers, otherwise an unusually clean copy.
First edition of a great Burma rarity, in the original publisher's binding, a photographic record of the Third Anglo-Burmese War, by a participant and eye-witness. The rarity of this book, and why other copies are often damaged, is explained by a printed slip contained in other - damaged - copies reporting of a fire at the publishers on the 8th of December 1887, stating that their premises have been subject to 'a serious fire … the contents have suffered very considerably'. This is not the case here, but the binding did not completely escape rodents.
With this war Upper Burma and the whole of the country had come under British control. 'The pictures are necessarily small, as they were taken by apparatus capable of being carried by an Officer in the field, the negatives being on Eastman's paper' (preface). The views are taken in and around Mandalay, show street vendors, priests, the Palace, Merchant Street, Kyaung on Mandalay Hill, the Cemetery, scenes on the Irrawaddy, and and group portraits of the British Army officials.
COPAC locates only two copies, in the BL and at SOAS.

#2097660