The First Book of Heliotypes. A Scottish Competitor to Charles Darwin
April 1, 2025 James Hamilton
(I don't know if anyone really cares what the first book to deploy the relatively minor Heliotype was, but the pictures are lovely and it's not a long tale, so..)
The Heliotype was one of a number of collotype photomechanical printing processes developed during the 1860s and capable of printing directly onto paper. It was invented by the English photographer Ernest Edwards in 1869. By 1872, his enterprise the Heliotype Company had seventy-five employees and the technique was beginning to come into use overseas.
According to the GernsheimsGernsheim, Helmut and Gernsheim, Alison, The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era London: Thames and Hudson 1969 p.549, the first book published to use the technique was Charles Darwin’s The expression of the emotions in man and animals published in 1872 with John Murray. The photographs – by the great Oscar Rejlander – are extraordinary, much more famous now than the book itself.
Two of Oscar Rejlander’s immortal photographs for Charles Darwin.
The cost in opting for photographs over engravings was heavy: the firm were quoted £66 for every 1000 sets of images (£6300 today) and R. F. Cooke wrote to Darwin from Albemarle Street to say
It will make a terrible hole in the profits of each edition, much more I fear than you imagine.
However Cooke’s letter was sent well into the calendar the year – it’s dated 16th August – and this opens up the possibility that another book managed to pip Darwin’s to the post. This is Bishop Alexander Ewing’s The Cathedral or Abbey Church of Iona, published in Edinburgh by Grant and Son, contains ten Heliotypes from original negatives shot (where identifiable) by George Washington Wilson.
The book was a new edition of a title originally published in 1866, and this reprint may have been occasioned by dismissive treatment by J. Stewart McCorry in his book The Monks of Iona late in 1871. Ewing’s own involvement in the is difficult to discover and in fact he would pass away in May 1873 after a life haunted by illness. The reissue doesn’t appear to have been heralded in any way by the press, which is unfortunate as a review or advertisement would offer confirmation – or not! of Ewing’s book appearing earlier than Darwin’s. The copy at the Signet Library in Edinburgh is listed among the books added in 1872-3, and the undated title page has “1872” added in ink by the librarian at the time, historian and bibliographer David Laing.
Ewing’s book and its entry in “Books Added to the Signet Library” for the year
The Plates
Iona Cathedral & St Oran’s Chapel
Iona Cathedral
Ruins of the Nunnery, Iona
South Aisle, Iona Cathedral
Sediliae, Iona Cathedral
Door of Chancel, Iona Cathedral
Tombs of the Kings, Iona
St. Martin’s Cross, Iona
The College and Church, Cumbrae
The College and Church, Cumbrae