Mathew Brady; Portraits of a Nation

New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. First U.S. Edition [stated]. Hardcover. x, 273, [5] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations. Signed and Inscribed by the author on the title page. Signature under author's printed name. Below which is the inscription: For Susie, With best wishes, Bob Oct. 15, 2014. Includes Introduction, Acknowledgments, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index. Chapters cover "A Craving for Light"; "This Great National Map;' 'In Daguerreotypes...We Beat the World," "Large Copies from Small Originals"; "Startling Likenesses of the Great"; "Wonderful Strangers"; "Last Place...to See the Nation Whole"; "Illustrations of Camp Life"; "A Continuous Roll of Musketry"; "More Eloquent Than the Sternest Speech"; "The Terrible Reality and Earnestness of War"; "Brady and the Lilliputians"; "Rebel Invasion"; "That Memorable Campaign"; "The Ball Has Opened"; "A Photographic Pantheon"; "Familiar as Household Words"; and "The Stings of Poverty". Wilson's 2013 book, Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation, is a biography of the pioneer photographer Mathew Brady. Reviewers noted the difficulties of writing a biography of Brady, about whom many details are unknown. Washington Post reviewer Michael Ruane thought the book's best aspect was "its fascinating account of how the business of photography worked in the mid-19th century", and The Economist similarly commented that the book was "more a portrait of an age than of a man". He also wrote The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax; Clarence King in the Old West, about the flamboyant 19th century geologist Clarence King, who was the first director of the U. S. Geological Survey. Robert S. Wilson (born 1951 is an American magazine editor and author. He is the editor of The American Scholar, the literary journal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He took that position in 2004, after having previously been the literary editor at Civilization magazine and the editor of Preservation magazine. Wilson has also written two biographies set in nineteenth-century America, and he has edited a collection of essays from Preservation. He worked at The Washington Post and at USA Today, where he was a book columnist as well as an editor. He was a founding literary editor at Civilization, a magazine published under the auspices of the Library of Congress. Civilization won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1996. In 1996, Wilson became the editor of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Under Wilson, Preservation won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1998. In 2004 Wilson briefly served as editor of the AARP Bulletin,then became the seventh editor of The American Scholar. Wilson took steps to increase the journal's focus on current events. The American Scholar's writers have won a number of awards during Wilson's tenure, and the magazine has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2015. Mathew B. Brady (May 18, 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the earliest photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, among other public figures. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, though most of these were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself. After the war, these pictures went out of fashion, and the government did not purchase the master-copies as he had anticipated. Brady's fortunes declined sharply, and he died in debt. Congress granted Brady $25,000 in 1875, but he remained deeply in debt. The public was unwilling to dwell on the gruesomeness of the war after it had ended, and so private collectors were scarce. Depressed by his financial situation and loss of eyesight, and devastated by the death of his wife in 1887, he died penniless in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896, from complications following a streetcar accident. Brady's funeral was financed by veterans of the 7th New York Infantry. He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, which is located in Barney Circle, a neighborhood in the Southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. Brady is credited with being the father of photojournalism. Condition: Very good.

Keywords: Photographers, Mathew Brady, Civil War, Photojournalism, Antietam, Alexander Gardner, Gettysburg, Samuel F. B. Morse, Samuel Morse, Timothy O'Sullivan

ISBN: 9781620402030

[Book #82345]

Price: $45.00

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