Album of the Mexican Railway: A Collection of Views Taken from Nature...With a Description of the Line and Country Through Which it Passes.
Mexico: Lithographic Establishment of Victor Debray & Co., Editors, 1877.
Oblong folio, [4] 48 pp. (title and text in English and Spanish, French text at end), 25 chromolithographic plates (including title) of sites and towns along the Mexican Railway route, double-page map. Oblong folio, original red gilt pictorial cloth, upper cover with title. Numerous plates with a stain in the blank margin well outside the image; but prints and map generally in good condition In a new red cloth folding box.
§ First edition. The plates include spectacular views of Veracruz, Orizaba, Puebla, and illustrations of stations, locomotives, freight and passenger trains, bridges and tunnels, etc. The superb double-page map shows the dramatic mountains and volcanoes between Veracruz and Mexico City from a bird's-eye view. This glorious plate book, published the same year that Porfirio Díaz came to power, captures a pivotal moment in Mexican history, with its clashing images of powerful machines intruding into pristine, picturesque landscapes, heralding the evolution of the country from a rural-agrarian world of "many Mexicos" to a unified modern technological society. Dorothy Sloan sold two copies years ago, neither as good as this copy. Item #126320
Price: $7,950.00