At the age of 48, when she moved to the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was given a camera by her daughter: It might amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater. The gift was to begin 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 Cameron's photography began with the pioneering 1926 book by her great-niece Virginia Woolf and art critic Roger Fry. Their essays and the original 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. Firty-nine plates and other illustrations have been added, including many of Cameron's most famous images. AUTHORS: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was a pioneering British photographer, closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. Her soft-focus portraits, whilst not widely appreciated in her lifetime, were some of photography's earliest claims to being valued as a form of art. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English writer and modernist, and a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group. She is famous for the non-linear narratives of her novels, and for her feminism. Roger Fry (1866-1934) was a painter, critic and another member of the Bloomsbury Group. He championed avant-garde and non-representational developments in modern art, particularly those of Post-Impressionism. Tristram Powell is a film director and historian. SELLING POINTS: . Best compilation of work by one of the great pioneers of photography . Spectacular gallery of the great and good of Victorian England 69 b/w illustrations