[Boswell and Talbot family photograph albums].

Five albums and one box holding portraits of family, friends, and colleagues of the Boswell family of Auchinleck House in Scotland and theTalbot family of Malahide Castle in Ireland. The photographs, primarily carte-de-visites, feature men, women, children, pets, and some members of the nobility, who were photographed in London and other cities in the United Kingdom, as well as in Ireland and Europe. Most of the sitters are unidentified. The albums were once housed in an ebony-veneered storage cabinet owned by James Boswell (1740-1795) and used by him at Auchinleck House. The cabinet was moved to Malahide Castle in the late nineteenth century and used there by the Talbot family

Box 1 contains one album bound with Mauchline ware covers, holding 185 photographs in 23 double-sided leaves; the metal clasps are missing and the portraits are not captioned. Auchinleck House is the central image on the album's front cover; images of other elements of the estate's landscape appear in the four corners, with an image of ferns on the back cover

Box 2 contains one album bound in brown leather over raised gothic panels with metal clasps, holding 42 photographs in 24 double-sided leaves; the portraits are not captioned

Box 3 contains one album with a mother-of-pearl front cover, holding 68 photographs in 24 double-sided leaves; the metal clasps are missing. Most of the portraits are captioned and include surnames Talbot, Lyell, Strickland, Wade, Ford, Hay, Napier, Popham, Cobb, Smythe, de Meesters, and others

Box 4 contains one album with leather covers and metal clasps, holding 40 photographs in 25 double-sided leaves. A few of the portraits are captioned and include surnames Willis, Devonshire, and Lyttelton

Box 5 contains one album with a wood and iron strap front cover and 54 photographs held in 25 double-sided leaves; the back cover and metal clasps are missing. The album has an index in front which lists the names of 33 members of the British nobility but the portraits are not individually captioned

Box 6 holds two folders of loose carte-de-visite photographs, most captioned on versos, accompanying the albums. Also present are six black album leaves with portraits of Italian and British members of the Anglo-Egyptian-Italian Mission to the Senussi in Cyrenaica, July-September 1916, to end a Senussi revolt against the Italians in Libya; included are portraits of Colonel Milo G. Talbot, the leader of the mission, and his associate W. H. Haslam