1897 West Australia Photographs Album

1897 'West Australia' Photographs Album containing 35 albumen prints (each 240 x 175 mm) of photographic montages individually mounted on thick gilt-edged, linen-hinged card pages, showing images of personalities, localities & industries throughout Western Australia beginning with 'Gold Wine Grain' overlaid with vignette portraits of Sir John Forrest (Premier), Eh Wittenoom (Agent General) & other ministers, then Albany, Perth, Claremont, Fremantle, Railways including 'Albany Express' & 'Opening of Menzies Railway', Timber Mills including 'Canning jarrah' with vignette portrait of Frank Wilson Mla, General Manager and 'Millar's Karri & Jarrah Forests', Aborigines, Camels at Diorite, etc, followed by an extensive section of Gold Mining including 'The Great Boulder' with views of Main Shaft, Lane's Shaft & 280 Shaft, mechanical equipment including air compressor & winding engines, 'The Boulder Perseverance', 'Lake View Consols' with view of filter presses & the battery, 'The Ivanhoe', Hannan's Star', 'Boulder Central', Hannan's Brown Hill', ' Kalgurli Bank of England', 'Burbanks Main Lode', 'Vale of Coolgardie', 'Deep Lead Kanowna', 'White Feather Main Reefs', 'Hill End, Broad Arrow', Menzies Gold Estates', 'Sons of Gwalia', 'East Murchison United', 'Lake Way Gold Mine', 'Inclined Shaft Cue One', 'Cuddingwarra Proprietary', 'The Light of Asia', 'Cosmopolitan Proprietary Niagara', Murchison Consolidated Day Dawn', 'The Butterfly Dumps Red Hill' including image of the 'Golden Butterfly' nugget, etc, some wear to cover & spine (which could be restored) and aging marks on pages but photo prints are generally fine. Weighs 3½kg. A truly spectacular social history record: the album is inscribed to 'Hans Hw Irvine with compiments from Ej Luke 2/6/99' but bears no indication of publisher; as the front cover design is identical to that of the famous book 'History of West Australia - A Narrative of her Past, together with Biographies of her Leading Men' by Wb Kimberley published by Fw Niven & Co [Melbourne, 1897], we believe this album was published by the same firm at around the same time, presumably as an accompaniment to Kimberley's book.