The 1889 Grand Tour Travel Album is a unique treasure. It documents an 80-day, 11,900-mile European tour during the summer of 1889 by four young, unmarried women: Cora, Harriet, June and “Myself,” the album’s photographer, souvenir photo buyer, caption writer, and curator. This 90-page facsimile edition includes very early Kodak snapshots taken with a Kodak #1 camera, together with many commercial souvenir photographs, all painstakingly curated, organized, dated, captioned, and preserved by “Myself.”
Their adventure began in June 1889, leaving New York for Liverpool on the SS Celtic, then journeyed from England to Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France before returning via England to New York in September. The album is a vivid personal visual diary, filled with views of cityscapes, buildings, candid snapshots, life aboard White Star liners, and much more.
The album was the primary resource for photo historian and author Ron Polito’s article published in the 2017 New England Journal of Photographic History, #175. His in-depth research teased out the story: the photographs, the ships, the travelers, their itinerary and other details. The facsimile edition is a supplement to the 2017 PHSNE Journal, created using high-resolution scans from the original album pages, printed on heavy stock, with an open-flat wire binding. © 2018
