£300
Oblong album containing 12 mounted photographs. Original green pebbled cloth, boards bordered in blind, front board blocked in gilt and red including title and imprint. Leaves foxed, some photographs a little spotted. A little rubbed and soiled, extremities worn. Remains of typed label to spine now reading ‘ottish Scenery’.
A collection of early photographs of Edinburgh, assembled for the tourist trade by the firm of George Washington Wilson. Wilson (1823-93) established a business in Aberdeen just as the building of Balmoral got underway, and was asked by Victoria to photograph the process, the first of several royal commissions. 'Wilson's skill as a photographer and entrepreneur lay in his understanding of the potential of the medium for providing ever-increasing numbers of tourists with photographic souvenirs of their travels' (ODNB). This volume is evidence of that, containing photographs of Holyrood, the Scott Monument, Princes Street and the Old Town. Demand was such that Wilson was producing several million prints per year by the late 1870s.
