GARDNER, Alexander.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War. First and sole contemporary edition of the most famous collection of Civil War images, America's first and most important book illustrated with photographs. It was also the first book to picture battlefield dead "and to shock its public with their stark brutality" (Parr & Badger). Of an edition of 200 sets, a putative 75 are extant.Gardner (1821-1882) was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, and went to the United States in 1856, where he made contact with Matthew Brady; by 1858 Brady had put him in charge of his Washington DC gallery. Gardner's friendship with fellow-Scot Allan Pinkerton, chief of Lincoln's intelligence service, was instrumental in promoting to the President Brady's idea of photographing the Civil War. Appointed staff photographer under General George B. McClellan, Gardner originally toured with Brady, but there was a falling out when Gardner found that Brady had been passing off his photographs without giving him credit. From 1862 he went his own way, accompanying generals Ambrose Burnside and "Fighting Joe" Hooker.Arranged in approximate chronological order - beginning in 1862 and ending with the dedication of the Patriots Monument at Bull Run in 1865 - the images show battlefields, notably Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Antietam, but also "encampments, headquarters of the troops, officers and enlisted men, soldiers in drill formation and in the field under fire, and the ruins left after the battles. Limitations in the p

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