William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography

Edited by Mirjam Brusius, Katrina Dean, and Chitra Ramalingam

Essays by Mirjam Brusius, Chitra Ramalingam, Katrina Dean, Anne Secord, June Barrow-Green, Graham Smith, Herta Wolf, Vered Maimon, Larry J. Schaaf, Eleanor Robson, and Simon Schaffer

Published by the Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in association with Yale University Press

320 pages, 10 x 7 inches, 109 color illustrations, cloth, ISBN 978-0300179347

Publication date: October 29, 2013

Description

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was a British pioneer in photography, yet he also embraced the wider preoccupations of the Victorian era, a time that saw many political, social, intellectual, technical, and industrial changes. His archive, including a large collection of manuscripts and photographs in the British Library, reveals the many connections and contrasts between his photographic innovations and his investigations into optics, mathematics, botany, archaeology, and classical studies.

Written by distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines, including historians of science, art, and photography, the essays in this book draw on Talbot’s fascinating letters, diaries, research notebooks, botanical specimens, and photographic prints to broaden our understanding of him as a Victorian intellectual and a man of science.