Kailbourn, Thomas R.

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KAILBOURN, Thomas R.

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wellsville, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 94305-2235.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and house painter. Associate editor, Daguerreian Annual.

MEMBER:

Daguerreian Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Caroline Bancroft History Prize, Denver Public Library, 2001, for Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865.

WRITINGS:

(With Peter E. Palmquist) Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2000.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, the second volume of the "Pioneer Photographers" series, with Peter E. Palmquist.

SIDELIGHTS:

Thomas R. Kailbourn is the coauthor of Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, a 2000 reference book—written with Peter E. Palmquist—that contains approximately 1,500 entries. The publication includes photographs of some of the subjects, and it also features works by some of them. An entry on Ellison I. Crawford, for example, includes Crawford's photograph of a fern. Benjamin Markovits, in his review for the Times Literary Supplement, declared that "browsing through the dictionary itself feels slightly like walking through a military cemetery," and he added that "the entries themselves resemble a kind of elaborate headstone, rich in dates and places." For Kailbourn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West "has the fascination of a graveyard." Another reviewer, Jonathan Kirsch, affirmed in the Los Angeles Times that Pioneer Photographers of the Far West constitutes "an authoritative reference work," and he expressed particular praise for the entry on Edweard James Muybridge, which includes a photograph in which the celebrated figure sports a hat that resembles a box camera. Kirsch acknowledged the publication as a "well-written …dictionary," and he added that "it's possible to open the book at random and find something fascinating, illuminating or funny, and sometimes all of them at once."