“The Lower Penobscot River Region,” compiled and edited by Richard R. Shaw, Arcadia Publishing Co., Dover, N.H., 128 pages, $16.99, paperback.

“The Sebago Lake Area,” compiled and edited by Diane and Jack Barnes, Arcadia Publishing Co., Dover, N.H., 128 pages, $16.99, paperback.

“Maine Life at the Turn of the Century through Photographs of Nettie Cummings Maxim,” compiled and edited by Diane and Jack Barnes, Arcadia Publishing Co., Dover, N.H., 128 pages, $16.99, paperback.

Back in the 1940s, Marion J. Bradshaw, a professor of the philosophy of religion at the Bangor Theological Seminary, published a fancy hardcover series of photography books about various aspects of Maine. One of the volumes was titled, “The Nature of Maine,” another was “The Maine Scene,” and still another was “The Maine Land.” The hundreds of photographs, mostly in black and white and primarily of places and scenes with few people, were taken by the author, who traveled all over the state, and who also provided the rather gushy commentary to complement his romantic view of the Pine Tree State.

Fifty years later in the 1990s, a company called Arcadia, a subsidiary of the British Chalford Publishing Corp. in Dover, N.H., has been turning out one historical picture-book about Maine after another. They call themselves the “Publishers of Regional and Local Interest Books,” and they seem to be trying to cover the entire country, region by region.

In their current catalog, they have listed 238 books about 13 states, 53 of them about Maine; and there are three also about New Brunswick.

As they explain in a promotional leaflet: “As the information superhighway sends us hurtling into the 21st century and an ever-expanding global community, we are often moved to explore the past in an attempt to recapture the tranquility and simplicity of bygone years. Today, many communities are investigating their past and rediscovering their local heritage so they, too, can feel a part of a shared history. People learn about their origins so as to better understand who they are.”

It’s true that since the bicentennial of the United States in 1976, there has been a proliferation of historical societies founded, local town histories published, and nostalgic picture books printed, such as Will Anderson’s “Good Old Maine” (1993) and “New England Roadside Delights” (1989).

But this Arcadia publishing enterprise is the most ambitious project of its type yet and, perhaps, ever. There are two series: the Images of America and the Old Photographs. The agent for this area is Allan Swenson, who used to run the Guy Gannett Publishing Co. in Portland; but the financing of the operation comes from a Mr. Alan Sutton in England, who has produced similar series of books in Germany, France, and England. Swenson has been responsible for hiring the authors and editors, who are mostly historians and journalists.

“The Lower Penobscot River Region” was put together by Richard R. Shaw, the longtime editorial page assistant, book editor and feature writer of the Bangor Daily News. Being a native of Bangor, Shaw is already very knowledgeable of the history of his hometown as well as of Maine, in general, so he was a good choice for this project.

Previously, Shaw edited the “Bangor” book (1994) and “Around Ellsworth and Blue Hill” (1995), and he is researching and completing work on two more volumes: “Bangor, Part II,” and “Around Brewer,” to be published by 1997.

Shaw begins his “Lower Penobscot River Region” book with a quotation from Henry David Thoreau: “There stands the city of Bangor, fifty miles up the Penobscot, at the head of navigation for vessels of the larger class, the principal lumber depot on the continent, with a population of twelve thousand, like a star on the edge of the night, still hewing at the forest of which it is built, already overflowing with the luxuries and refinements of Europe, and sending its vessels to Spain, to England, and to the West Indies for its groceries — and yet only a few axe-men have gone `up-River,’ into the howling wilderness which feeds it.”

The quotation is from one of Thoreau’s journals that he kept on his three excursions to Maine in the 19th century and were published as the book, “The Maine Woods.” Shaw corrects Thoreau’s measurements by saying, “Bangor is closer to 30 miles from the mouth of the river, with an additional 30 to the open ocean.”

In his introduction, Shaw invites his readers to travel through his book as if they were on a boat going from Searsport at the head of Penobscot Bay up the river to Bangor, stopping along the way to take a look at the “river towns” of Stockton Springs, Prospect, Verona, Bucksport, Frankfort, Winterport, Orrington and Hampden.

The cover photograph of a 1908 steamboat outing attended nearly exclusively by women was taken by a woman, Hattie D. Hichborn of Stockton Springs. And throughout the book there are some wonderful and rare photos.

Besides all the views of main streets, the boats, wharves, trains, early automobiles, and resort hotels, there are such important pictures as the one taken in 1927 of Searsport’s last surviving deep-water captains; the group photo of women sardine packers at the Stockton Canning Co. in 1917; and an 1870 photo of the final construction period of Fort Knox in Prospect. There’s a 1910 photo of John Peirce’s granite works in Frankfort as well as of quarry workmen.

Among the people pictured, there are such notables as painter Waldo Peirce, Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, and social reformer Dorothea Dix, who was born in Hampden. There are some reproductions of postcards and posters, such as the one advertising an “Old Maid’s Convention” in Hampden. Appearing at Harmony Hall was a Madam Pinkerton, who claimed to be able to “transform spinsters into charming maidens and blondes into brunettes.”

In the Bangor section, there’s a wonderful and rare interior view of passengers on the Katahdin boat; and Shaw’s book concludes with a nighttime view of the old Bon Ton ferry that traveled between Brewer and Bangor.

Jack Barnes, who writes a regular column for the Maine Sunday Telegram, and his wife, Diane, have compiled two recent books for this Arcadia series titled, “The Sebago Lake Area” (1996), and an especially interesting one called, “Maine Life at the Turn of the Century (1995), subtitled, “Through the Photographs of Nettie Cummings Maxim, who lived all of her life on a farm on Bird Hill in Bethel.”

As the Barneses say in their introduction, “The real impact of her work is that she chronicled on film activities of a rather typical Maine hill farm and farming community, which included people, animals, buildings, the narrow, winding road leading up the hill, and landscapes throughout the four seasons. Then, too, she took many valuable photographs of the thriving village of Locke’s Mills in the town of Greenwood, the economic, social, and service hub for the ten families who lived just a mile or so away on Bird Hill.”

Most of Mrs. Maxim’s photographs were taken from 1900 to 1910; and there are some haunting beauties from a long lost rural Maine: her children picking daisies, a family picnic at the Greenwood Ice Caves, a man up to his chin in an oat field, a boy sawing wood, men and horses working the fields, a barn raising, a newsboy delivering the Lewiston Journal, people fishing and boating, barn cats, a man with a pigeon on his head, and a girl smelling a rosebush.

As the editors write, “Through her cameras, Nettie recorded a tiny piece of the world that was so endearing to her. In doing so … she did present us with precious vignettes of life in rural Maine at the turn of the century.”

In “The Sebago Lake Area,” Mr. and Mrs. Barnes have compiled the photographic histories of the towns of Windham, Standish, Raymond-Casco, Sebago and Naples. Similar in theme to Richard Shaw’s “Lower Penobscot” book, the towns described all exist along the waters of the streams and ponds that feed into Sebago Lake in Cumberland County.

In their introduction, the editors provide a minihistory of the Sebago Lake region going back to the Indians who named the second-largest lake in Maine “Sebago,” which means “great stretch of water.”

By the turn of the century, Sebago had become a popular summer resort area with hotels, boys’ and girls’ camps, and private cottages. There are wonderful photographs of all of these, along with a whole chapter devoted to the boats, especially the steamboats, that serviced the area.

But there are also pictures of the local people posing with their deer and bear kills, with boons of logs heading for the paper mills, harvesting ice from the lake and working in sawmills. There are delightful camping pictures, both indoors and outdoors; and a great shot of “The Naples Mail Stage,” which in 1920 was a Model T Ford driven by Flora Chute Jewett, who delivered the mail in East Sebago.

Jack and Diane Barnes also compiled “The Oxford Hills” volume in this series and have just finished work on “The Lakes Region,” to be published later this fall.

Other Maine editors who have worked on this comprehensive project include Frank Sleeper, who has done the books on Augusta, Caribou and Presque Isle, “Around Houlton,” “Portland” and “Margaret Chase Smith’s Skowhegan”; and Jack Bardwell, who has written “Old Kittery, Ogunquit, Old York” and “Old York Beach.” Allan Swenson has done “Rural York County”; and there’s even a volume dedicated to the good old days at Colby College.

As might be expected, the books, of uneven quality and with minor errors here and there, tend to sell the most copies in their own individual towns and areas; but it’s amazing that certain photographs even exist. Old photographs are interesting anyway, regardless of whether one is familiar with the particular locale highlighted.