This remarkable gallery of portraits from the past represents a
who’s who
of famous figures from nearly a century ago-Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, the Wright Brothers, and other celebrated individuals. Dating from 1910 through 1922, the collection features 112 rare images of luminaries from the worlds of politics, art, entertainment, and industry. These vintage portraits originated in the Library of Congress’s Bain Archive, a compilation of photographs from an early news picture agency. Selected from thousands of glass negatives, these black-and-white prints offer rare images of icons from a bygone era: artists and musicians such as tenor Enrico Caruso, cellist Pablo Casals, dancer Isadora Duncan, and actress Sarah Bernhardt; silent movie stars Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, and Buster Keaton; authors Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Leo Tolstoy; athletes Jack Johnson, Ty Cobb, and Jim Thorpe; magnates Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Ford; reformers Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Sanger; Soviet revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky; several American presidents; and many others. Detailed captions accompany each photograph.