Photographs: Amherst College Class of 1876

LOVELL, John Lyman, photographer; Dwight M. Pratt, owner

Published by [Amherst, Massachusetts], 1876

About this Item

Large thick quarto (11" x 14"). Bound in dark brown paneled morocco stamped in gold on both covers and spine, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt. Modern laid paper endleaves with the original binder s ticket: "C.W. Bryan & Co., Springfield, Mass." retained on the front free endpaper. Lithographic title page printed in gold. Compiled by Dwight M. Pratt, a member of the 1876 graduating class, with his name stamped in gold on the front cover. Contains 142 albumen prints neatly mounted on the rectos of 142 cardboard leaves, with images of faculty and students, the Amherst baseball team, a lone African-American man, and views of Amherst campus, its buildings and environs. A few outer leaves at the front and back are lightly waved, moderate scattered foxing, very good or better. An elaborately bound senior class yearbook album featuring 142 photographs taken by John L. Lovell, an early daguerreotypist and proprietor of the Amherst Picture Gallery, the first photographic studio in Western Massachusetts. The album includes 21 portraits of faculty and administrators, 83 portraits of students, 5 group portraits (including one of Dwight M. Pratt on the baseball team), and 33 views of the campus and environs, one of which features an African-American man prominently in the foreground. Notable figures among the students include the publisher and philanthropist George Arthur Plimpton (1855-1936), grandfather of the famous American journalist and author George Plimpton (1927-2003); and Aaron Burtis Hunter, a prominent Episcopal minister and principal of St. Augustine s for Negroes in Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition to the baseball team, the album s owner Dwight Pratt is featured in another group portrait of six students. He went on to lead a pastorate at Housatonic, Massachusetts. A handsomely bound volume containing many fine individual and group portraits, together with campus views, all by Lovell, Amherst s most important nineteenth century photographer.

Seller Inventory # 532621

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Photographs: Amherst College Class of 1876
• Publisher: [Amherst, Massachusetts]
• Publication Date: 1876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography
  • Americana