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270pp. plus twenty-four original photographs. Quarto. 20th-century three-quarter green morocco and cloth by Root & Son, a.e.g.

The first American literary volume illustrated with original photographs. The twenty-four beautiful photographs by Francis Frith are scenes captured during Frith's travels in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. Includes a preface by Frith.

 "The book is notable for its direct association of landscape photographs as non-literal visual equivalents of literary ideas" - TRUTHFUL LENS.  "...HYPERION was a touristic narrative.  Set in the early nineteenth century, the story's trajectory follows the course of the Rhine, with stops at tourist sites.  The year before this edition was published, Frith had traveled the Rhine, and from those travels had produced THE GOSSIPING PHOTOGRAPHER ON THE RHINE.  It is possible to imagine him picking up a copy of HYPERION on those travels, much like the clientele of Tauchnitz, or simply bringing it along to guide his perambulations and then deciding that it was a good idea to illustrate it himself.  In any case, the photographs that resulted from this trip found their way into HYPERION...Thus Frith was not only the consumer but also the producer of the illustrated novel, and performed both the functions of the reader tracing the protagonist's journey and of the photographer confirming the fact of the journey through photographs" - Armstrong.  See Carol Armstrong's book for an exhaustive scholarly treatment of the relationship between Frith's photography and Longfellow's text. ~TRUTHFUL LENS 106. Armstrong, SCENES IN A LIBRARY (1998), pp.284, 332-42, and passim.

Donated by the William Reese Company, New Haven, CT.