Milestones of Science Books

TALBOT, William Henry Fox.

Coley Avenue, Reading, ca. 1845.

1845.

1st Edition. No Binding. Oblong folio. Good. Item #003653

160 x 175 mm. Salt print from calotype negative, mounted on card, verso with unrelated pencil note in Calvert Jones' hand [Schaaf no. 326]. Condition: some fading to image as usual.
Henry Fox Talbot set up a photographic studio in Reading in 1844 (the 'Reading Establishment'), and many of the images for The Pencil of Nature - the first book to be illustrated with photographic prints - were printed there. Provenance: Sotheby's, 8 May 1992, lot 138; Bonhams, San Francisco, 7 November 2007, lot 628.
Reference: Gail Buckland, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography, London 1980, p. 184; Larry Schaaf, William Henry Fox Talbot, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Getty Publications, 2002.

Price: 4,500 €  *  convert currency