Britain’s Working Coast in Victorian and Edwardian Times (2008)
The Victorians and Edwardians at Play (2009)
The Victorians and Edwardians at Work (2009)
The Victorians and Edwardians at War (2012)
John Hannavy has compiled a number of books collecting together Victorian and Edwardian photographs on a variety of themes in British life. Published by Shire, they have a standard format: an introduction, followed by photographs mostly drawn from the author’s collection and relying heavily on commercially-produced postcards, accompanied by captions and brief contextual information.
In addition to information on the topic at hand, Hannavy describes the evolution of photographic processes, the limitations of which affected what could be done with the medium. As well as the postcards the images include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, cartes de visite, lantern slides, photochrome prints, autochromes and stereoscopic photographs. These are often tinted, and look remarkably realistic. Such details are handled lightly for a non-specialist audience, and the primary attraction is the images, taking the viewer back in time.
Britain’s Working Coast in Victorian and Edwardian Times (2008)
Britain’s Working Coast in Victorian and Edwardian Times is number 548 in the Shire Library series. Photography books covering this period tend to focus on leisure activities – as does John Hannavy’s 2003 book The English Seaside in Victorian and Edwardian Times – but as the title indicates, it was a working environment too.
As a maritime nation, Britain’s coastline was a busy place and Hannavy tours the country clockwise, starting in London (not precisely coastal, admittedly, but a busy port with plenty of relevant activity) and stopping at almost 70 locations en route. In a short book each location can only be treated briefly, but together the photographs and the informative commentary display the coastal areas of England, Wales and Scotland in their heyday.
The traditional activity of fishing, and the trades associated with it, came to be overshadowed by industrial uses, with docks and shipyards growing to accommodate the circulation of goods both inbound and outbound, catering for a consumer base with greater affluence than ever before, and ports enjoying fast links to cities thanks to the railway network. But the railways also brought leisure opportunities, and tourism was a significant component of the coastal economy. On the back of increased access came construction, including the building of piers.
Photographers, itinerant and local, were on hand to record day-to-day life, and as technology improved and exposure times reduced were able to capture life on the fly rather than relying on static situations. There was huge demand for the resulting photographs and Hannavy pays tribute to postcard collectors, who ensured so many were preserved when they might easily have been thrown away, for which we can only be thankful.
The Victorians and Edwardians at Work (2009)
The Victorians and Edwardians at Work is number 549 in the Shire Library series. Hannavy notes that the recording of occupations is almost as old as the medium, notably the bootblack at work on a Paris Street in Louis Daguerre’s 1838 photograph, and Henry Fox Talbot’s 1845 ‘woodcutters’, actually his staff, carefully posed for the lengthy exposure. From these early examples, photographs of people in a working environment burgeoned, providing an invaluable record of Britain’s industrial heyday. The book covers over 40 categories of work, each accompanied by a few paragraphs setting the context.
The alleged nobility of labour was of great fascination to the Victorians and Edwardians, and a wide variety of photographs, many issued as postcards, were produced to document occupations regarded as photogenic. So, for example, village trades were deemed worthy of being recorded whereas clerical work unsurprisingly was of less interest, providing a slanted view of the ways it was possible to make a living and suggesting a view of the countryside that was in reality disappearing.
This was a period of advances in mechanisation, but working conditions for many were still hard – something not always glossed over in images that were mainly intended for a middle-class audience, with mills and mines on display. Those of women, whether at work or in domestic situations (not all work being remunerated of course), may have involved a degree of voyeurism, a fascination with the other.
With the great demand for postcards, purchased in enormous quantities, photographers exercised their ingenuity in finding different subjects, many of which were primarily of local interest. Even so, as Hannavy points out, the fact these examples were taken, collected and preserved, rather than used for their intended purpose, indicates their value to their original audiences. We may consume them differently today, but they still exercise their fascination.
The Victorians and Edwardians at Play (2009)
Presented as a companion to at Work, The Victorians and Edwardians at Play is number 550 in the Shire Library series, showing how leisure time was spent by the British in photography’s first seventy or so years. After a brief introduction the contents are arranged thematically, showing the leisure pursuits available as for many as the working week reduced in length, incomes rose, and improved transport links allowed easier movement around the country and abroad. As they had both more leisure time and readier access to the means with which to record it, many of the photographs show the middle-classes having fun.
Hannavy emphasises how popular the sending of postcards became, but how surprisingly slow Britain was in developing a colour postcard industry (mentioned also in the other books) and how reliant companies were on German printers, to whom colour processing was entrusted. Only with the outbreak of the First World War were domestic companies forced to improve the quality of colour production to fill the gap.
This is a broad spectrum of leisure activities, many recorded in Hannavy’s native Scotland. The final section, ‘holidaying abroad’, would have justified a book to itself as international travel became more organised and affordable. The connecting narrative, including captions, aimed at a general audience, is chatty and informative.
The Victorians and Edwardians at War (2012)
The Victorians and Edwardians at War is number 674 in the Shire Library series. Whereas Hannavy’s other Shire albums concentrate on Britain, naturally the subject of war features photographs from conflicts around the world that involved the British Empire. Such a publication can make for uncomfortable reading, but the emphasis is on the pictorial rather than the ethical, and the author does not delve into the issues of empire which made these images possible.
The camera took some years to develop to the stage where it could go to war. Even then its limitations, in terms of cumbersome equipment, difficult manipulation of plates and the length of exposure times, meant its use was restricted, and the main method of recording conflict was the artist. Hannavy describes the evolution of photographic technology during the nineteenth century, showing how advances gradually allowed the camera to provide a more spontaneous record of war, or at least manifestations of war.
In the early days the process was so complex, and undertaken in conditions so unfavourable, it is a wonder any results at all were obtained, but gradually less laborious and more reliable procedures made the photographer’s life easier. Even when the camera superseded the pencil the results were generally made palatable to a middle-class audience, sanitising war’s less appetising aspects, meaning that photographs including dead bodies from the Siege of Lucknow in 1858 were all the more shocking to a British audience. Photography in the American Civil War was less squeamish, and the sight of dead bodies became commoner as the century progressed.
Hand in hand with photographic improvements came advances in printing, so that by the time of the Second Boer War in 1899, there was a plethora of illustrated magazines vying for photographs. But by now they were products to accompany the text, rather than objects in their own right. Postcards did not neglect the armed forces, acting as soft propaganda for British power.
After a general overview of the development of photography as applied to military matters, including portraits, there are sections dealing with the Crimean War, India, China, Afghanistan, various African campaigns, and the Navy. The tone is different to Hannavy’s other volumes in the series, but his treatment is the same, with the context filled in and informative captions for the photographs. We may not celebrate them as we once did, but their legacy is part of our national identity, a legacy with which we are still grappling.
The Joy of Mere Words 