Publication and book launch: William Henry Fox Talbot Beyond Photography

[Michael Pritchard]

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

Drawing on Talbot’s fascinating letters, diaries, research notebooks, botanical specimens, and photographic prints, distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines, including historians of science, art, and photography, broaden our understanding of Talbot as a Victorian intellectual and a man of science.

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

A book launch and drinks reception will follow a lecture on 5 October (See: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/event-lecture-the-work-of-henry-fox-talbot) at the Divinity School, Bodleian Library. Tickets can be booked for the lecture at the link above.  If you wish to attend the book reception only please contact: [e-mail]

See: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300179347

Mirjam Brusius is postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Harvard University.Katrina Dean is a university archivist at Melbourne University. Chitra Ramalingam is postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.