Volume III of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions

Encouraged by her scientist father, Anna Atkins began in the early 1840s to experiment with the new art of photography. That she was among the earliest women to do so, however, would not be her most significant legacy. Privy to Sir John Herschel’s accidental invention of the cyanotype, Atkins applied his photographic process—and the deep field of Prussian blue it yields—to the problem of how to make multiple prints that conveyed precise information about her growing collection of British seaweed specimens. Atkins arranged, exposed, and developed photograms of more than 400 unique specimens, issuing them to her “botanical friends” as plates of a self-published book in parts. The first installment appeared in October 1843, making hers the first photographically illustrated book in history.