Skip to main content

Posts

Featured

Book Review: Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography by Jeff Rosen

A bold new study of Julia Margaret Cameron’s Victorian photographs, charting the legacy of colonialism following the 1857 Indian Uprising.   Julia Margaret Cameron, the celebrated Victorian photographer, was a child of the colonies. Born in 1815 in Calcutta, she was the daughter of a governing official of the East India Company. After relocating to London in 1848, Cameron was embraced by other British expatriates and a celebrated cultural network. This circle included literary personalities like Thackeray and Tennyson, painters and critics associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and political figures like Thomas Babington Macaulay and Lord Lansdowne.   In 1857, Indians rebelled against British rule, and in London, Cameron became absorbed by news of the Uprising. In the aftermath of the revolt, national and imperial politics transfixed England, some seven years before Cameron took up photography. The impact of those forces, and the inspiration of the literary, artistic, and poli

Latest Posts

Book Review: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her By Graham Watson

What I am reading next: Psykhe by Kate Forsyth

A review of Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell

Book Reviews: on books to be published: Enlightenment by Sarah Perry and The Skeleton Key by Susan Stokes-Chapman