£950
Small 4to, pp. 64 + frontispiece and 14 tissue-guarded mounted albumen prints. Original green cloth, front board blocked in gilt, spine lettered in gilt, edges gilt. Frontispiece and attendant tissue-guard partly sprung. A touch of wear to extremities, front hinge split, joint holding.
A rare and important photographic record of Victorian Edinburgh, by photographer Archibald Burns (1831-1880). Intended to capture buildings which were under threat of loss - 'a decade of years in the nineteenth century often produces as many changes as a century did in former times... each year now requires its own guide-book, so quickly does the new appear and the old pass away', as Henderson remarks in the text - Burns's photographs were also commissioned by the Edinburgh Improvement Trust as a record of the old closes between the University and the Cowgate.
