Adverts

Adverts for many trades and businesses appeared at the back of the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories. 

Some of the early adverts had attractive engravings.  Others gave an insight into Edinburgh life in the early days of photography.

Below are a few categories of advert:

 Advert for H Fox Talbot Book illustrated by calotypes  -  No 2 of Pencil of Nature ©

Books

Volumes containing calotypes by Hill & Adamson and by Talbot were advertised in The Scotsman in the 1840s.

 Adverts in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories ©

Businesses

These adverts show some street scenes, including the locations of several Edinburgh businesses in the 19th century.

Adverts in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories  -  Entertainment ©

Entertainment

In attracting membership and visitors to their annual photographic exhibitions, Edinburgh's early photographic societies would have had to compete with these entertainments.

Here are adverts for some of these rival attractions, together with adverts for entertainments in earlier years where I found these to be interesting.

Advert from the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory  -  1853  -  James Turner, engraver ©

Engravers

Many of the scenes photographed by Edinburgh's early photographers had previously appeared in engravings.  It is interesting to compare the engravings and the photos.

Some of Edinburgh's early photographers were engravers before they took up photography.

©

Hotels

Menu from the Beehive Restaurant  -  1950 ©

Menus

©

Music

Adverts in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories  -  Photographers ©

Photographers

These adverts show the scope of work of a few of Edinburgh's professional photographers, and in some cases the prices they charged.

Adverts in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories  -  Photographers ©

Publishers

These adverts include postcard publishers

Detail from an advert in the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory  -  1866  -  Alex Ferguson, 1 Melbourne Place ©

Shops

These adverts show some Edinburgh street scenes, including  several of Edinburgh's shops in the 19th century.

Adverts from the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directories  -  Shipping and other transport ©

Transport

These adverts show some of the transport available, and in some cases the speed and cost of this transport, in the early days of photography in Edinburgh.

A H Baird Advert  -  December 1913 ©

Transactions of
Edinburgh Photographic Society

Transactions of Edinburgh Photographic Society were published monthly from 1880 until 1926.

These Transactions included many adverts for photographic businesses.  There are links to these adverts from the list of photographic trades.

 

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