19th Century Card Photos KwikGuide: A Step-by-Step Guide to Identifying and Dating Cartes de Visite and Cabinet Cards

I just love these quick books! I have learned much from them. The information is invaluable when looking at old cabinet cards!

This book really educated me about CDV and cabinet cards. Was very good at the amount of photos in order to date various photos by a couple of means, i.e. clothing, etc.

I would have given this 5 stars except that the book has dozens of typos which completely contradict each other. For instance one page will say a particular photo is from 1873, two pages later it will say it's 1883. These are just some arbitrary dates I used for the scenario. Seriously there are enough conflicting things like this that I felt like contacting the editor. As harsh as that sounds, this book is absolutely an excellent tool for genealogists and amateur archaeologists. Thanks to this guide I was able to set a date range for many historical photographs I found to get a fuller picture of the past on an archaeology site I researched in Arkansas, as well as get an A in my advanced methods in archaeology course at MSU.

This is an EXCELLENT book for anyone that collects any era of antique photographs. I personally collect postmortem CDV photos of babies & young children. I know, I know. It may sound gruesome and some times it is. However, the Victorians had a different relationship with death which claimed as many as 40% of all children before the age of 5. This book addresses all areas of collecting and provides invaluable information to placing dates on these little gems that tell us so much about who we used to be. A must have book for the collector.

I have a huge collection on family photographs, including many very early photo. I've always had trouble dating them as images like tintypes and cabinet cards were used over a long period of time. Some photographs have cryptic notations such as Grandma Burnham. Thanks to these books by Gary, I can narrow down the date and estimate the persons age to help identify 'which' grandma Burnham this individual might be. So happy!

I would recommend this book for anyone who has a beginning interest in the history of 19th Century photographs. This is far better than a similar book I had previously purchased by a different author. The substance is excellent. As an aside, because I was at one time an English teacher, the publisher needs to hire a proof reader or at least a different one. There is a surprising amount of typos, incorrect words and missing words. In spite of the poor proof reading, I found the book to be very worth while.

I've purchased a couple of books on dating 19th century photographs and looked at many more and this one is by far the best. After a very short history of Carte de Visite's (CDV) and Cabinet Card photos, the majority of the book gives you clues in an orderly manner to date your photo. An example, for CDVs look first at thickness, then borders, corners, imprint, size, stamps, clothes,& studio, and the book explains in good depth what to look for under each heading. This book makes it easy to be accurate within just a few years. There are numerous charts and even a checklist for Carte de visites. It's just as informative for Cabinet Cards. Highly recommended.

As a photo historian it's always difficult to lecture about dating photo types and especially their formats without bringing in lots of originals and resources, many of which I've written up myself for easy use. This book has it all! There are other books out there that cover this, but not as clearly or succinctly or thoroughly. If you work with historic photographs in any way and need information based upon them, this book will be a great tool.

Very useful although it could certainly have done with a good proofreader, as there are a lot of basic errors that should have been picked up. Another problem is that this is really focused on the history of 19th century photos in the US, although this is very similar to that in the UK, I would have preferred a version focused specifically on the UK.Still a very useful guide.

I don't often buy books but had a new hobby and this will be useful.

These Kwik Guide books are invaluable to me. I'm a collector of old photos & enjoy seeing & reading books like this about my subject. Great for my research too.

Clear, good sample photographs, well annotated, good index and has helped date many photo's in my collection and a good addition to

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