10 •(CARTES-DE-VISITE) Victorian album containing 100 remarkable carte-de-visite portraits of important American and European cultural figures by notable photographers. Includes Nadar's autoportrait, images of George Sand (3), Rosa Bonheur (4), and one each of Courbet and Ingres; the Americans Edgar Allen Poe, Frederick Douglass (2), Louisa May Alcott, "Blind Tom" (full length), Lucretia Mott, Tennessee Claflin, Stephen Crane, Rembrandt Peale, the sculptor Harriet Hosmer; as well as Europeans Charles Darwin (4), a young Brahms (clean shaven), older Brahms (bearded), plus Bizet, Liszt, Wagner (2), Verdi (3), Louis Pasteur, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens (4), Florence Nightingale, Victor Hugo, and Benjamin Disraeli. Albumen prints, the images generally measuring 3½x2¼ inches (8.9x5.7 cm.), the mounts 4x2½ inches (10.2x6.4 cm.), most with the photographer's imprinted credits on mounts verso and several with later, penciled caption information. Oblong debossed morocco, backstrip defective, brass clasps; all edges gilt. 1860s

[4,000/6,000]

A who's-who of 19th-century cultural figures that was apparently compiled by a 20th-century collector; 14 of the images depict women of merit.