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Photography Collections Database

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There are more than five million objects in the Harry Ransom Center's Photography Collection. Many records contain legacy descriptions. A review and update of our records is ongoing.

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Call Number:

PH-00977

Collection Name:

Photographic Portraits of Living Celebrities

Creator:

Maull & Polyblank (British, active 1854–1865)

No. of Items:

10 items

Span Dates:

1856–1859

Description:

Photographic Portraits of Living Celebrities: 10 albumen prints and corresponding biographical wrappers
Photographic Portraits of Living Celebrities was a serialized publication issued monthly from May 1856 to October 1859. The publication presented forty 8 x 6-inch arched top photographic portraits of significant figures and personalities, mounted on 12 x 10-inch paper with gilt borders by Messrs de la Rux & Co. 


Each installment included a biographical wrapper authored initially by Herbert Fry, and later by Edward Walford. Monthly installments comprising one portrait and a letterpress biography were available for purchase by the public for 5 shillings (5s.). Advertisements promoting the publication, highlighting both past and upcoming installments, were featured in the newspaper Notes and Queries. A prevalent practice in the 1850s and 1860s was to collect these portraits and their corresponding biographical wrappers, which would then be bound together as a complete album at the end of the series’ run. The serialized publication was subsequently offered as a single volume, published in 1859. 

Location(s):

q TR 681 F3 M285 HRC-P; (2024.0003.0001-0010)
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