20+ Toy & Miniature Books for a complete mini fix

Like reading about toy photography, toys, miniatures and anything in between? Well here’s a list of books just for you.

Know of one that should be here but isn’t? Comment below and I’ll continue to update the list! Is there one here that you think shouldn’t be here? Let me know that too! I’ve read a lot of these, but not all of them.

If you’d rather a list of movies and fiction stories click here.

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Miniature Theory

(learn more here)

• The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (1958)
• On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection by Susan Stewart (1984)
• In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World by Simon Garfield (March 2019)

Toy Photography History

(learn more here)

• Fabrications: Staged, Altered, and Appropriated Photographs by Anne H. Hoy  (1988)
• Photo Fakery: A History of Deception and Manipulation  by Dino A. Brugioni (1999)

Figure toy photographers, the founders

• David Levinthal
• Arthur Tress
• Laurie Simmons
• Dare Wright

Figure toy photographers, current big names

• Lori Nix: The City by Barbara Pollack (2013)
• 10 Frames Per Second, An Articulated Adventure by Johnny Wu (2017)
• Brian Mccarthy Art-Toys & War-Toys
• Toy Photographers 2017 & 2018

Model based miniature photographers

• James Casebere: Model Culture (1996), The Fugitive (2016), The Spatial Uncanny (2001), Works (2011)
• Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot by Wesley David Archer (1933)

About the lives of toy photographers

• Beatrice Helg by William Ewing (2000)
• Welcome to Marwencol by Mark Hogancamp (2015)
• The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright by Jean Nathan (2005)

Art miniatures

• Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago by Fannia Weingartner (2009)
• The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Corinne May Botz (2004)
• The Book of Mini: Inside the Big World of Tiny Things by Kate Esme Unver (April 2019)
• Within the Fairy Castle: Colleen Moore’s Doll House at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (1998)
• The Queen’s Dolls’ House: A Dollhouse Made for Queen Mary by Lucinda Lampton (2010)
• America’s Doll House: The Miniature World of Faith Bradford by William L. Bird (2010)