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Album of 57 mounted albumen photographs. Each photograph has a manuscript caption and ruled borders. (Oblong) 25.4x35.6 cm (10x14"), maroon half-morocco with all edges gilt, housed in original slipcase.

A record of a French family's holiday in 1886. The photographs principally depict the beach at Villers-Sur-Mer, a village slightly west of the better-known towns of Trouville and Deauville on the coast of Normandy. There are several images of people strolling and playing on the beach and in the sea, as well as photographs of the grand hotels along the beach front and the town's streets, churches and villas.

The family has outings to the countryside, including a visit to a farm, the medieval church in the town of Dives (from where William the Conqueror set sail for England in 1066) and other towns nearby - Cabourg, Honfleur, Houlgate and Le Havre. With their new-found prosperity the French bourgeoisie in the second half of the nineteenth century flocked to the small shipping and fishing towns along the Normandy coast for their summer holidays. The French impressionist painters, including Renoir, Monet and Caillebotte, indelibly and romantically recorded these holiday idylls in many of their famous paintings.