The lazy Lays, and Prose Imaginings written, printed, published, and reviewed by W.H. Harrison. A. D. 1877 (Popular Chronology;) A. M. 5877 (Torquemada;) A. M. 50,800,077 (Huxley.) London.
photographer, spiritualist and journalist William Henry Harrison was a regular contributor to the British Journal of Photography, and several pieces here evidence his passion. For photography. 'The Lay of the Photographer' is a mock heroic describing the preparation of photographic plates, with the important chemicals personified as the elegant Bromide, the adventurous young Pyroxyline etc. Harrison claimed to have invented a bromide emulsion dry plate, and the poem touts the superiority of his process: if you mention the outmoded iodine method to a photographer, he is liable to 'shriek and turn pallid with fear'. A second piece in an orientalist mdoe, 'How Hadji Al Shacabac was Photographed', describes his visit to a mysterious wizard skilled in the art of instantly producing pictures of people with the aid of a small 'cannon'. The other pieces include verse in praise of a 'Broad-Brimmed Hat', as well as the imagined lamentations of a 'Fat Man' and a 'Mother-in-Law'. The prose story 'Our Raven' describes the author's trials as the hands (or claws) of a demonically possessed Raven with a passion for gardening. Other more serious essays include 'How to double the Utility of the Printing Press' and 'Materialistic Religion'.