History of Photography. From Talbot to Stieglitz: Masterpieces of Early Photography from the New York Public Library by Julia Van Haaften.

Thames & Hudson, 1982. 1st edition.  An illustrated guide to some of the outstanding holdings at the NYPL, this volume is also invaluable for the articulate essay by the photo curator Julia Van Haaften. Photographers illustrated include William Henry Fox Talbot, Alinari, Édouard Baldus, Maxime Du Camp, Francis Frith; Alvin Langdon Coburn (two views of London taken for Henry James), Alexander Gardner and other Civil War views by George Barnard and Timothy O’Sullivan; Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Hine, John Thomson (19th century views of Thailand) and Japanese vignettes by Felice Beato; Native Americans by Edward S. Curtis, Frank Sutcliffe, Muybridge, Bernard Shaw, and many others. Hardcover, fine with very good dust jacket that has a short closed tear near the top front edge.  Summary:

From Talbot to Stieglitz: Masterpieces of Early Photography from the New York Public Library (1982) is a landmark curatorial survey compiled by art historian and archivist Julia Van Haaften. Published by Thames & Hudson, the 126-page volume serves as a critical showcase of the New York Public Library's extensive but previously under-recognized holdings of historic photography, tracking the rapid evolution of the medium across its first eight decades.

The book features a historical introduction by Van Haaften alongside a preface by then-NYPL Chairman Andrew Heiskell. Structured around 96 high-quality sepia-toned duotone plates, the monograph chronicles the major stylistic and technological shifts from the birth of photography to the dawn of modernism. It presents rare and definitive masterworks from 38 seminal photographers, tracing a chronological lineage that begins with the early 1840s calotype experiments of William Henry Fox Talbot and culminates in the turn-of-the-century Photo-Secessionist work of Alfred Stieglitz. Along the way, the catalog highlights crucial historical chapters including civil war documentation, expeditionary landscapes of the American West, and early European pictorialism.