Two volume set of albums containing predominately cartes de visite photographic portraits of prominent American 19th-century figures in politics, education, and the arts. Portraits depict actors, artists, authors, Congressmen, educators, governors, military leaders, physicians, publishers, religious leaders, social reformers, scientists, and U.S. presidents and their spouses. Includes mostly vignette and bust-length portraits and a small number of full length portraits. Also contains a small number of trimmed portrait engravings, tintypes, and a photo-collage depicting evangelist D. L. Moody with the under photograph copyrighted 1877. Small number of sitters are unidentified., Men sitters include P. T. Barnum; Henry Ward Beecher; John Brown; Ned Buntline; Samuel Clemens; Jefferson Davis; O. S. Fowler; Oliver Wendell Holmes; Abraham Lincoln; Samuel Morse; Thomas Nast; Hiram Powers; Winfield Scott; Gerrit Smith; Cornelius Vanderbilt; John Wanamaker; Brigham Young; Native American chiefs Ouray, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull; and African Americans Frederick Douglass and performer "Blind" Tom. Women sitters include presidential spouses Frances Cleveland and Lucretia Garfield; reformers Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull; authors Louisa May Alcott, Helen Hunt (Jackson), Harriet Beecher Stowe; sculptors Harriet Hosmer and Vinnie Ream; and performers Maria Albani, Charlotte Cushman, and Kate Field., Title from item's cover., Photographers include Mathew Brady, E. & H. T. Anthony; Jeremiah Gurney; and George Kendall Warren., Majority of sitters identified by a manuscript note on the album page or on portrait or an inscribed label., Brown leather bindings with gilt, stamped in gilt on front boards: Volume I: American Celebrities. Vol. I.; Volume II: American Celebrities. Vol. II. Stamped in gilt on spines: Album., Purchase 1985., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., See "American Celebrities Album" item-level records for digital images of all identified individual sitters.
Date
[ca. 1870-ca. 1890]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department albums [P.9100.1 & 2]
