178
the Daguerreian and photogenic Art, both on Metallic
Plates and on Paper, was published by G. P. Putnam
in New York in 1849, and subsequently ran to several
editions throughout the 1850s. It was the fi rst manual
to detail the American approach to photography, and
to explain the practical differences between European
and American methodologies. In this book, Snelling
consistently uses the term ‘photogenic drawing’ as a
generic description of photography, differentiating be-
tween ‘photogenic drawing on paper’ and ‘photogenic
drawing upon metallic plates.’ Signifi cantly, for a book
so early in the published literature of photography, there
are numerous insightful and critical references to the
restrictive effects of early patents contained within an
historical overview of the art’s fi rst decade.
The practical descriptions within the book set a
pattern which many later volumes followed—that
of summarising the text of other books and journals.
Thus chapter two is a resumé of Hunt’s Researches on
Light, and chapter thirteen explains Antoine Claudet’s
Photographometer, the description being drawn in large
measure from an article in the March 1849 issue of the
Art Journal.
Self or private publishing, was an established fea-
ture of the nineteenth century book world, and several
amateur photographers published their own descrip-
tions of, and instructions for, the new processes. First
amongst there was W. Vaughan Palmer’s 1842 book The
Electrotypist’s Manual: being a description of the art of
working in metal by voltaic electricity, and on electro
gilding and plating, 6th edition, improved and enlarged,
to which is added a brief description of the Calotype,
Daguerreotype, or Photographic Processes.
Monsieur C. mansion, whose skill with the colourist’s
brush is evident in many of the fi ne tinted daguerreotypes
by William Kilburn, published his own Instructions for
Colouring Daguerreotypes in 1845, while Brighton
amateur Joseph Ellis published what is believed to be
the fi rst refl ective and retrospective look at the birth
of photography. His booklet Photography, A Popular
Treatise designed to convey correct general informa-
tion concerning the discoveries of Nièpce, Daguerre,
Talbot and others, and a preliminary to acquiring a
practical acquaintance with the art was self-published
with apparently limited circulation in 1847, two years
before Snelling’s History and Practice of the Art of
Photography.
John Hannavy
See Also: Talbot, William Henry Fox; Photogenic
Drawing Negative; Daguerreotype; Daguerre, Louis
Jacques Mandé; Calotype and Talbotype; Hunt,
Robert; Snelling, Henry Hunt; Claudet, Antoine-
François-Jean; Kilburn, and William Edward and
Douglas T.
Further Reading
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Incunabula of British Photographic
Literature, 1839–1875 London and Berkeley: Scholar Press,
1984.
Henisch, Heinz K., and Henisch, Bridget A., The Photographic
Experience 1839-1914 University Park Pennsylvania: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 1994.
Johnson, William S, Nineteenth Century Photography, An An-
notated Bibliography, 1839–1879 London: Mansell, 1990.BOOKS AND MANUALS ABOUT
PHOTOGRAPHY: 1850s
It might have been expected during the 1850s, with
the introduction of the wet collodion process and
the establishment of several signifi cant photographic
periodicals, that as the number of people engaged in
photography both as amateurs and professionals grew
exponentially, the number of manuals on the subject
would have increased at an equal rate. The relaxation of
patent restrictions increased the number of people taking
up photography as a profession, while the introduction
of photographic societies and periodicals contributed
considerably to the increased popularity of photography
as a hobby.
Despite that growth in the potential market for litera-
ture on the subject, there was not a signifi cant increase
in the scale of photographic book publishing. 1850 saw
the publication of only fi ve English language books and
manuals, with four in 1851 and only two in 1852. During
1853, however, a total of sixteen such books appeared,
with twenty in 1855.
While the number of new books and manuals avail-
able to the photographer did not increase signifi cantly
in total over the previous decade, the books themselves
were generally of a much more substantial nature, as
befi ts a maturing subject.
Robert Hunt set the pattern with his 1851 A Manual
of Photography published as part of J. J.Griffi n’s series
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana—or System of Universal
Knowledge: on a Methodical Plan Projected by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. A second edition was published in the
following year and periodically expanded and updated.
At 34 pages, the 1857 5th edition published by Richard
Griffi n and Company, was the most comprehensive, and
most popular. The London Art Journal, in reviewing the
title, noted that it “must prove of infi nite service to those
engaged in the pursuit of this entertaining science.”
In the same year in which A Manual of Photography
fi rst appeared, a 2nd edition of Hunt’s Popular Treatise
on Photography, fi rst published in 1841, appeared un-
der the title of Photography: A Popular Treatise on the
Chemical Changes Produced by Solar Radiation, and the
Production of Pictures from nature, by the Daguerreo-
type, Calotype, and Other Photographic Processes. TheBOOKS AND MANUALS ABOUTN PHOTOGRAPHY: 1840s