Channel Islands.- Singleton (Thomas) [Photograph Album] comprising: Views of Guernsey [&] Views of Jersey [&] Views of Sark, separate printed title to each, with 42, 8 and 22 mounted albumen prints respectively, (c.113 x 191mm.), each with printed caption beneath, initial leaf with manuscript presentation inscription from the photographer to Thomas Grigg, dated August 1871, some foxing and soiling, upper margin with some damp-staining making some mounts brittle and frayed at edges, 9 additional albumen prints by Singleton loosely inserted at end together with 2 mounted engraved views and other later images (probably taken from Singleton originals), original borwn morocco, gilt, oblong folio, Guernsey, [c.1869-70].

⁂ An excellent early photographic record of the Channel Islands around the time that Victor Hugo was living in exile on Guernsey (1856-70).

Thomas Singleton was born in the Isle of Wight in 1846 and sometime in the 1850s moved with his mother and one elder brother, Charles to Guernsey. He married Anne Hamilton from Northern Ireland in January 1868 and they had six children. He was an active photographer in Jersey, Alderney and Sark, as well as in his home island, and was helped in Guernsey with the printing by his wife and in later years by two of his children, Mary and Hamilton.