The Photographic History of the Civil War

The Photographic History of the Civil War In Ten Volumes: Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, as the full title reads, or The Photographic History of the Civil War for short, is a ten-tome compilation of war photography of the American Civil War of 1861–1865. Advance copies of individual volumes started being released sequentially from June 1911 onward for the semi-centennial of the beginning of the war, and finished up towards year's end, though the publisher had expressed the expectation to have had already finished up in mid-August 1911 in their accompanying letter to early customers who had taken out an advance subscription on the deluxe "Limited Edition" at reduced pre-retail release sales prices.^[1] Featuring a then-unprecedented total of 3,389 photographic images spread over 360 pages of each of the ten 7+1⁄4 in × 10 in (180 mm × 250 mm) measuring volumes, a hard copy of the complete collection weighs in at 42 lb (19 kg). The work is in the public domain and has since been digitized for use online.^[2] The lead editor was Francis Trevelyan Miller, who "conducted a nationwide hunt for old photos",^[3] though most of the actual legwork and discoveries made was done by his assistant Roy M. Mason, a recent Yale University graduate he had specifically hired for the chore, but did not bother to credit as such – though he was in the contents of each volume credited for the "Photograph Descriptions".^[4]

The Photographic History of the Civil War In Ten Volumes: Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities

"Palisades and chevaux-de-frise guarding Atlanta": This image of Confederate defenses around Atlanta, Georgia, as encountered by Gen. Sherman, appears in Volume 3 of The Photographic History of the Civil War, page 126
Author	Francis Trevelyan Miller, Editor-in-Chief; Robert S. Lanier, managing editor
Illustrator	Photographers of the American Civil War
Language	en-us
Publisher	The Review of Reviews Co.
Publication date	1911
Publication place	New York City, NY, USA
Pages	3,600 (app.)
OCLC	1467122
Dewey Decimal	973.7
LC Class	11011566

A 1988 bibliography retold a bit of the history of the compilation:^[5]

Edited by one of the time's leading historians, Francis T. Miller, it first appeared as a series of paperback, magazine-like booklets. A ten-volume, blue-backed set of the complete series appeared in 1911, on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the war. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the very first one in the first volume, "Photographing the Civil War," by Henry Wysham Lanier, which both describes period efforts to photograph the war and shows pictures of photographers in the field. Many of the images in this book were obtained from veterans who were able to provide first-hand captions.

Publisher The Review of Reviews Co. executed the constituent volumes of their collection in three edition variants; as the regular embossed cobalt blue silk cloth-bound hardcover edition with the likewise embossed cobalt blue faux-leatherette, "The Three-Quarters Morocco" binding, hardcover edition as the slightly more expensive luxury option, both of them with text-only dust jackets – essentially a duplicate of each volume's title page – the latter having been the most preferred edition, according to a contemporary bookseller's letter to interested parties.^[6] Customers who had ordered a complete set at the publisher or local bookstore had their set shipped to them in a for the era typical heavy-duty wooden transport crate that prominently featured the title and publisher name burned into the wood of the crate.^[7] The third embossed edition variant concerned the individually numbered 1,000 copy deluxe gold imprinted dark brown leather-bound "Limited Edition", aka "The Full Persian Morocco" binding, aka the "Semi-Centennial Memorial Edition" set, and which was the edition chosen to serve as the advance release before the set became available at retail in its entirety as touched upon above.^[1] The actual printing of the work was performed by The Trow Press, also located in New York City. Aside from the three editions of the collection itself, the publisher also released "The Passing of a Great Chance" portfolio, containing a selection of several larger, 8 x 12 inch, printed photographic folios from their publication as a promotional tool for both the publisher itself as well as retail booksellers to inform and entice potential customers, 296,462 of them having already paid to receive one by early 1912, according to a contemporary bookseller's letter to interested parties.^[6]

Volume titles:

1. The Opening Battles.
2. Two Years of Grim War.
3. The Decisive Battles.
4. The Cavalry.
5. Forts and Artillery.
6. The Navies.
7. Prisons and Hospitals.
8. Soldier Life and Secret Service.
9. Poetry and Eloquence.
10. Armies and Leaders.

Over a century into its release, the work remains considered a "landmark"^[8] and "the bible of Civil War photography."^[5] It is concurrently still deemed a crucial reference resource for historians and a classic work in the field.^[3] Civil War scholar and bibliographer Ralph Newman called the work in 1963, "(...)the great photographic source work for the war...The text has many errors, but the photographs are superb,"^[9] with contemporary historian Allan Nevins having stated that the work "(...)still remains the major source for photographs of the Civil War; the greatest single collection of Brady illustrations."^[2] Newman's latter-day successor, David J. Eicher, also subscribed to the same opinion as his predecessor(s), declaring in his influential 1996 "The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography" (ISBN 0252022734) reference book that Miller's publication continued to be "[t]he grandfather of pictorial histories, this mammoth work is a necessary part of any Civil War library. The work contains 3,389 images that constitute an important source on the war's appearance - its battlefields, common soldiers, officers, forts, diseases, camp scenes, army movements, and materiel."

By the early 1950s it was "long out of print" but the "desideratum" of avid Civil War collectors and historians; reprinting was considered but it was determined that it would be an "economic impossibility".^[10]

That early assessment notwithstanding though, a first five-volume (each collecting two of the original volumes) facsimile reprint was already released in 1957 by New York City publisher Thomas Yoseloff with an introduction by Henry Steele Commager, a contemporary American historian (OCLC 444833).^[9] And as if to underscore that the early 1950s assessment had become completely invalid by then, a second ten-volume facsimile reprint edition was in the same year released by Castle Books, also operating out off New York (OCLC 1118180). Several further reprint editions from a wide variety of publishers have followed suit since, especially after Miller's work had entered the public domain in 1986, which immediately precipitated a reprint edition of the 2-in-1 Yoseloff version a year later by the Blue & Grey Press, a division of Book Sales, Inc., Secaucus, NJ. (OCLC 17757174) One of the more notable reprint editions became the 1995 limited deluxe "Collector's Edition" from Easton Press. Lacking ISBNs and bound in genuine black leather with gold text imprints, it was essentially Easton Press' rendition of the original 1911 leather bound "Limited Edition". The facsimile rendition actually profited from modern scanning techniques, making it the superior one of the two where the quality of photographic reproduction was concerned.^[11] As a result, it is not too hard to come by an edition of the set at affordable prices on the second-hand book markets as there are many around; even the original 1911 edition appeared to have been disseminated in fairly large numbers at the time (30,327 copies sold within four months after editorial work on the collection was completed, according to a contemporary bookseller's letter to interested parties^[6]) as they are to this day regularly offered on auction sites like eBay.com, albeit at slightly higher prices. Copies of the 1911 release that still have their original dust jackets (and/or original shipping crate), not to mention the "Limited Edition", are a lot rarer though – and thus a lot more expensive.^[6][7][1]