The Signet Library 200th Anniversary Online Exhibition

signet library collection guides

the thomas annan collection of early photography

3. the castles and mansions of ayrshire

The castles and mansions of Ayrshire : illustrated in seventy views [by Thomas Annan], with historical and descriptive accounts / by A.H. Millar. Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1885

This is the last of the Annan photobooks in the Signet Library collection to be published during Thomas Annan's lifetime. It is an openly celebratory work, and comes to praise its subjects, the inhabited castles and mansions of Ayrshire. Unlike Annan's haunted pictures of the houses of the Glasgow gentry, these are summer images, and the trees in full leaf delight in framing Annan's gracefully cheerful sunlit compositions. As with all of his early photobooks, the print run was short: the Signet Library copy is number 94 of only 200 copies printed.