A comprehensive study of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

Renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is famous for her evocative portraits of eminent Victorians, including John Herschel, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Taylor, George Frederic Watts, Ellen Terry, and Julia Stephen. This study of her work reveals how deeply she was convinced of the poetic possibilities of her medium, particularly its capacity for suggestive rather than literal meaning. Cameron’s practice violated the aesthetic orthodoxy of the day, and she did not always succeed in her artistic goals. But the blurring of the “real” subject before her lens created unparalleled possibilities for a broader pursuit of the sublime and beautiful.

Drawing on over one hundred items from the photographic collections at the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, this book celebrates a collection that illustrates the aesthetic development of the photographer from her earliest pictures to her most poetic photographs. It also includes her poetry and the key images she created for her extraordinary Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems, demonstrating her fascination with the artistic connection between poetry and photography.