Volume I, III, IV: Untitled (photographs collected in India by a travelling theatre group)

Carefully assembled and annotated by a member of the Williams family theatre group, which toured India in 1899–1900, these albums (I, III and IV) document the travels of two American actors, Jean Stewart Brown and Hannibal Williams. They cover a vast range of subjects in India, including views of monuments, architectural icons and temple sculpture (as in the image above, depicting the stone carving of Shiva's bull Nandi in Mysore); gardens and interior scenes; images of religious devotees and rituals; as well as portraits of labourers, royalty, officials, holy men, and Indian and Himalayan women. Together they provide a rich document of India at the height of the British Raj.