Crawford The Beginning and the End of the World

St. Andrews, Scandal, and the Birth of Photography
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85790-058-6
Verlag: Birlinn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

In a work of spectacular imagination and remarkable synthesis, poet Robert Crawford celebrates St Andrews, the first town in the world to have its people, buildings and natural environment thoroughly documented through photography.
The Beginning and the End of the World tells the stories of several pioneering Scottish photographers, linking their work to one of the nineteenth century's most scandalous and hotly debated publications. Here is the extraordinary intellectual life of an eccentric society rich in apocalyptically-minded Victorian inventors and authors whose work has had an international impact. The protagonists include a very quarrelsome professor, a cello-playing ex-military golfer, a notorious scientist, a married couple coping with mental breakdown and a physician obsessed with sewage.
In paying full attention to these people's inter-relationship, implicitly and explicitly this book suggests that their lasting legacies may have a bearing on our own arguments about environmental sustainability and the possibility of largescale extinction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crawford, Robert

Leseproben

The Plates and Other Illustrations
Professors, townsfolk, golfers and students took hundreds of photographs in St Andrews throughout the 1840s – the earliest at or just before the start of the decade. This book contains only a very small selection. By 1846, when Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill published a few of their images as A Series of Calotype Views of St Andrews, most of the great early pictures had been taken. However, it is often very difficult to date exactly when individual photographs were produced, and it is hard to identify the photographers with certainty. Even with Adamson pictures, it is not always clear whether the photographer was Robert or his brother John. So precise dates and attributions remain in many cases unstable. A few pictures may have been taken or arranged by women, but all the names of the photographers we have belong to men. It would be possible to publish a fascinating album of surviving early St Andrews pictures. Subjects would range from ruins to golf, servants to professors, children to cliffs, gardens to ships, grand university and school buildings to poor fishermen’s houses. To assemble such an album would require substantial financial investment and would call on the resources of some of the world’s major collections of early photography, including the Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Galleries of Scotland, National Museums of Scotland, and National Library of Scotland, as well as the collections of the Department of Special Collections at the University of St Andrews, whose Photographic Archive, holding almost 750,000 images, is by far Scotland’s largest, and a national treasure. One day I hope such an album may be published as the catalogue to a great exhibition. For the moment, this book offers a sprinkling of illustrations drawn almost entirely from the impressive holdings of the collections belonging to the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow. Many can now be seen on databases accessible through those institutions’ websites, but a good number of the images in this book have never before been published in any volume. The endpapers of The Beginning and the End of the World come from Dr Grierson’s St Andrews As It Was and As It Is, a guidebook published in Cupar in 1838 by G. and S. Tullis, printer to the University of St Andrews (St Andrews University Library St A DA890.S1 G8 E38A). Within the book are four gatherings of plates: I between pp. 76 and 77
Plate 1 Sir David Brewster by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill, around 1843–5; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB24–71). Plate 2 North Street, St Andrews, looking from the cathedral end towards the steeple of St Salvator’s College, University of St Andrews, by Sir David Brewster or Major Hugh Lyon Playfair; print made in 1854 from a calotype negative of around 1842 (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB2–199). Plate 3 St Salvator’s College steeple in North Street under repair around 1845, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–51). Plate 4 North Street and the cathedral ruins with the square St Rule’s Tower viewed from the steeple of St Salvator’s College on an early afternoon around 1850, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrew Photographic Archive, ALB10–116). Plate 5 A shawled woman in front of the ruined Blackfriars Chapel and part of Madras College, St Andrews, around 1844, by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill; digital image from original calotype negative (Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department Hill and Adamson Collection, HA0832). Plate 6 Mrs Lyon’s Laundry Maid, around 1845, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–32–6). Plate 7 Dr John Adamson, probably around 1849. In an 1851 article and in his 1852 Treatise on the Stereoscope, Brewster wrote that ‘Dr Adamson of St Andrews, at my request, executed two binocular portraits of himself, which were generally circulated and greatly admired.’ Print from stereographic calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB8–88). Plate 8 George H. Gordon, Madras College Writing Master, around 1844, by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill; print from calotype negative (Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department Hill and Adamson Collection, HA0104). Plate 9 Major Playfair with Professor William Macdonald, Professor of Civil and Natural History, University of St Andrews, by an unidentified photographer, 1850s. This later picture of two men in costume gives a sense of the Major’s taste for amateur theatricals, evidenced by the theatre in his 1840s garden. Print from glass negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB1–130). Plate 10 Mr Rodger, around 1855, by an unidentified photographer. The photographer Thomas Rodger (1832–83) poses with his watch chain and monocle ribbon. Print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–32–5). Plate 11 Proposed Photographic Establishment St Andrews, The Property of Thomas Rodger, Esq., 1866. Architectural plan of Rodger’s studio which still stands in Market Street and may be the world’s oldest surviving purpose-built photographer’s studio building. (St Andrews University Library Department of Special Collections MS 37778B_BN1060). II between pp. 108 and 109
Plate 12 Robert Chambers around the time he authored Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), an engraving by T. Brown of a portrait by Sir J. Watson Gordon, reproduced in Lady Priestley’s The Story of a Lifetime (1908). Plate 13 Anne Chambers as a young mother, an illustration reproduced in her daughter Eliza’s much later memoir. Lady Priestley, The Story of a Lifetime (1908) (St Andrews University Library sCT 3328.P8FO8). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Plate 14 From the Links of St Andrews Looking South Eastward. A lithograph by F. Schenck of Edinburgh used as the frontispiece to Robert Chambers, Ancient Sea-Margins (Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers, 1848). The author presented a copy of this book to St Andrews University Library where it is now in the Department of Special Collections (For GB454.M2C5). Plate 15 A Laundry Maid, around 1845, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative. This picture comes from the album of Alexander Govan, Druggist, South Street, St Andrews (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6– 54–3). Plate 16 Professor Robert Haldane, Principal of St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, around 1845, by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–37–2). Plate 17 Major Playfair with a trophy, around 1850, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–21–2). Plate 18 Houses being pulled down for ‘improvement’ in South Street, March 1844, by John Adamson; print from calotype negative. A man identified as Mr John Kennedy stands on the site of the Albert Buildings (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–156). Plate 19 Fisherwomen baiting lines, North Street, around 1845, most probably by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–91). Plate 20 Scene at the same part of North Street (but now with a street-lamp), late 1840s, by Thomas Rodger; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB2–200) Plate 21 A boy feeding a pet rabbit, around 1850, by an unidentified photographer; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–1). Plate 22 The Adamson family around 1844, with John on the left and Robert on the right, by an unidentified photographer (but probably Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill); print from calotype negative (Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department Hill and Adamson Collection, HA0336). Plate 23 Specimen skeletons from the Museum of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society, around 1865, by John Adamson; print from calotype negative (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB8–91–1). Plate 24 Potato Head, around 1855, by John Adamson; print from paper negative. This oval mock-portrait has what seems to be a potato resting on a cloth draped like a jacket and collar (University of St Andrews Library Photographic Archive, ALB6–158). III between pp. 140 and 141
Plate 25 St Andrews from the Kinkell Braes, around 1845, probably by Robert Adamson with David Octavius Hill; print from calotype negative (Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department Hill and Adamson Collection, HA0776). Plate 26 St Andrews Castle from the Scores at...

Über Autor(innen)

Crawford, Robert
Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at St Andrews University. He received his MA from Glasgow University and his DPhil from Oxford. He is a founding Fellow of the English Association and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has taught at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow, and has been at St Andrews since 1989.

Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at St Andrews University. He received his MA from Glasgow University and his DPhil from Oxford. He is a founding Fellow of the English Association and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has taught at the universities of Oxford and Glasgow, and has been at St Andrews since 1989.