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Topic:	The Ilford Manual of Photography
Author/Copyright:	John Jovic and Peter Naylor

The Ilford Manual of Photography is an important document which, due to having been in publication for the last 120 years, is capable of showing the evolution of Photography. It's first issue was published in 1890(#1), about 40-50 years after the introduction of any vaguely practical photographic techniques, the Wet Collodian process, and not long after the introduction of the Dry Plate and Celluloid Roll films in the late 1880's. The first Kodak camera using Celluloid Roll film had been introduced just a few years before the first issue of The Ilford Manual of Photography. It was a time when photography was quickly becoming much more accessible to the masses than it had ever been. Kodak's new film camera divorced Chemistry (or Alchemy) and Science from the act of taking (or laboriously making) a photograph and famously stated, "You press the button, we do the rest". These must have been heady days with new access to an exciting process, photography, previously only available to the truly dedicated practitioner.

The times when the first issue was released where in many ways similar to our very recent past where film has been superseded in popular use by digital which has made the act of photography easier again, opening the flood gates to a new set of masses.

The Manual of Photography is currently available in it's tenth edition (#2).

Pictured are the first and last of the C.H. Bothamley editions. Image kindly supplied by Peter Naylor.

The following information and publication dates of the early C.H. Bothamley editions have been kindly supplied by Peter Naylor. Please contact Peter Naylor directly ( pnaylor@iinet.net.au ) if you can contribute any further information about these early editions.

"The British Ilford Manual Of Photography was first published in 1891 by the Britannia Works Company, and is an invaluable guide to photographic techniques, darkroom theory and associated topics. Britannia subsequently changed its name to llford Limited in 1902. C.H. Bothamley edited all these early maroon-and-gold editions, being replaced around 1930 by GE Brown. For reasons best known only to Britannia/Ilford, the early editions are all undated. However, you’d have to suspect it was something to do with keeping prospective purchasers in the dark, if a newsagent or bookstore had a superseded edition still for sale out there on the shelves! The later grey larger editions from the 1930s onwards did have conventional bibliographical referencing in the frontispiece page, probably due to compulsory import requirements in the USA, for which I say “God Bless Uncle Sam”!

The only positive clue is usually the printing volume number, which is identified towards the bottom of the Frontispiece page and reads something like ‘ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH THOUSAND’. However, on occasion there is also a helpful date included in the Appendix/Price List Pages, and sometimes a previous owner of a particular book may have handwritten the date of purchase in. Please bear in mind this is no definitive indication of printing date though, because the book may have been purchased second hand or have remained unsold in a bookshop for a couple of years. However, in the latter instance, it does tell us that the book cannot have been printed after that date. If a date is in bold characters (“1904”) , then it means I am pretty sure it is correct - if it is in light italics like “1905” , then it means it is only my guesstimate. Regarding page numbers, I've only gone as far as the actual last numbered page, not the often unnumbered additional ones in indices.

Please also bear in mind that this is by no means a complete work! It is an ongoing task, with continual updates and amendments as more information become available. So far, with great assistance from fellow classic camera collectors from around the world, I’ve identified 49 separate printings. These are listed in the following pages in numerical and hopefully reasonably chronological order, but the gaps in printing editions suggests there are far more still to be identified. So if you have some information to add to the list, either in the form of a printing edition not yet included or some more positive data about dates, price or page contents – please email me at pnaylor@iinet.net.au with the details. Every little bit of information helps.

You might wonder why I just didn’t take the easy way out and email either Ilford Ltd or Focal Press, who took over publishing of the IMOP, for this data. Well, I did – and I’m still sitting here waiting for a reply from either or both …….. !I guess that tells us something about “Lean And Mean Corporate Philosophies In The 21^st Century”, eh?"

Edition	Publisher	Price	Pages	Year
3,000^th	Britannia	1/-	207	1891
12,000^th	Britannia	1/-	212	1891
13,000^th	Britannia	1/-	196	1892
16,000^th	Britannia	1/-	212	1892
19,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1892
20,000^th	Britannia	1/-	184	1893
30,000^th	Britannia	1/-	199	1893
35,000^th	Britannia	1/-	202	1894
45,000^th	Britannia	1/-	196	1895
50,000^th	Britannia	1/-	196*	1895
55,000^th	Britannia	1/-	200	1896
60,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1897
70,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1897
75,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1897
80,000th	Britannia	1/-	180	1898
85,000^th	Britannia	1/-	183	1898
90,000^th	Britannia	1/-	176	1898
95,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1898*
96,000^th	Britannia	1/-	180	1898*
99,000^th	Britannia	1/-	190	1899
110,000^th	Britannia	1/-	204	1899*
115,000^th	Britannia	1/-	204*	1899*
120,000^th	Britannia	1/-	204	1900*
125,000^th	Britannia	1/-	204	1900
130,000^th	Britannia	1/-	204	1901
135,000^th	Ilford	1/-	204	1902
145,000^th	Ilford	1/-	204	1902
150,000^th	Ilford	1/-	214	1902
160,000^th	Ilford	1/-	214*	1903
165,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1903
170,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1904*
175,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1904*
180,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218*	1904
190,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1905
195,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1905
200,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1906*
210,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1908
215,000^th	Ilford	1/-	218	1909
220,000^th	Ilford	1/-	186	1910
225,000^th	Ilford	1/-	232	1911
230,000^th	Ilford	1/-	232	1912
235,000^th	Ilford	1/-	232	1913
240,000^th	Ilford	1/-	232	1914
245,000^th	Ilford	1/-	232*	1915
250,000^th	Ilford	1/-	282	1916*
270,000^th	Ilford	1/-	282	1920*
290,000^th	Ilford	1/-6d	288	1921*
300,000^th	Ilford	1/-6d	288	1922*
310,000^th	Ilford	1/-6d	290	1925*

* Denotes uncertainty

References:

(#1) 'The Manual of Photography formerly The Ilford Manual of Photography', 6th Edition (1976), Edited by Alan Horder, Published by Focal Press
(#2) 'The Manual of Photography formerly The Ilford Manual of Photography', 6th Edition (1976), Edited by Alan Horder, Published by Focal Press. The present numbering of editions began with the first 1942 James Mitchell edition.

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