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Paperback – 145 x 115 mm – 192 pages

69 photographs

ISBN 9781843682356

At the age of forty eight, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was given a camera by her daughter when she moved to the Isle of Wight: ‘It might amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.’ The gift was to begin Mrs Cameron’s short but prolific career as one of photography’s first great artists.

From the first moment I handled my lens
with a tender ardour, and it has become
to me as a living thing, with voice and
memory and creative vigour.

The modern interest in the photography of Julia Margaret Cameron began with the pioneering book published in 1926 by her great-niece Virginia Woolf and the art critic Roger Fry. Their essays and the original 20 plates are reprinted here, together with Cameron’s own account of her life in photography, ‘Annals of My Glass House’, her only surviving poem, ‘On a Portrait’, and an introduction by Tristram Powell.

A further 49 plates and other illustrations have been added, including many of Cameron’s most famous images, making this an essential book for anyone interested in the Victorians and photography.