Cambridge University Press

Anna Atkins

16 March 1799 - 09 June 1871

Anna Atkins , the world's first female photographer,

Moorhead, Joanna. “Blooming marvellous: the world’s first female photographer—and her botanical beauties”. theguardian.com.

was a novelist, botanist, science writer and illustrator, and memoirist.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

During her lifetime she published six books, but she is primarily remembered as a mid-Victorian pioneer of photography, both in itself and for scientific illustration.

Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Milestones

16 March 1799

Anna Children (later AA ) was born at Ferox Hall, her grandfather's house at Tonbridge in Kent.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

October 1843

AA finished hand-producing and began circulating volume one of the first photographic book published in the UK,

Williams, Val, and Susan Bright. How We Are: Photographing Britain. Tate Publishing, 2007.

209

which was also her earliest work: Photographs of British Algae. Cyanotype Impressions.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

9 June 1871

AA died at her home, Halstead Place, near Sevenoaks, at the age of seventy-two.

Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Biography

Birth and Early Years

16 March 1799

Anna Children (later AA ) was born at Ferox Hall, her grandfather's house at Tonbridge in Kent.

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

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