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The Landing of the French Atlantic Cable at Duxbury, Mass., July, 1869.
Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, 34 School Street. 1869. 57 pp., 6 mounted albumen prints. Old stamp on verso of title page reading “William H. Floyd Collection No. 7494,” the number accomplished in pencil. First and only edition of this scarce and interesting volume illustrated with early examples of photojournalism in the form of original photographs by John Whipple of Boston. The introduction provides an explanation of the book’s publication: “It is believed that the great event of the landing of the first Transatlantic Telegraph Cable on American shores is important enough to possess, not only a peculiar local, but a general, historic interest, which merits a careful preservation of a record of all the circumstances connected with it.” One of the more interesting photographs included here, entitled The Landing, shows two steamships offshore and the cable stretching across the beach, where a crowd has gathered. This image has received some attention from photographic historians. It is reproduced, for example, in W. Robinson’s A Certain Slant of Light. The other photographs included are Abraham’s Hill, The Scene of the Celebration (large tents and a crowd on the hill); Section of Duxbury Beach. On which the cable is Landed; Cable House on Rouse’s Hummock; “Old Cove.” The point where the cable was brought to the main land; and Old Bank Building. Terminus of Telegraph at Duxbury. While Whipple is not specifically credited in this book, he has been definitively identified as the photographer by Sally Pierce in her Whipple and Black, Commercial Photographers in Boston, p. 13 and fig. 10. Somewhat intriguingly, the volume offered here bears an ownership inscription on the flyleaf reading “Geo. Albert Whipple from Libby’s Oct. 30, 1900.” This could very well be a descendant of John Whipple, who was married to a woman named Elizabeth. REFERENCES: Truthful Lens 101. CONDITION: Good, worn at extremities, head and foot of spine chipped, remnant of a newspaper clipping affixed to front paste-down, occasional foxing.
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