British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) has been described as one of the Finest portraitists of the nineteenth century-in any medium. Raised in a well-connected and creative family, Cameron led an unconventional life for a woman of the Victorian age. After devoting herself to an artistic and literary salon at her home on the Isle of Wight and raising eleven children, Cameron took up photography in her late forties. Over the next fourteen years, she produced more than a thousand strikingly original and often controversial images. Her searching portraits of her friends and acquaintances, including Alfred Tennyson and Charles Darwin, have been called the world's first close-ups. This biography casts new light on the artist's links with the leading cultural figures of her time and on the techniques she used to achieve her distinctive style. It is published to coincide with a travelling exhibition of Cameron's photographs that will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Televison, Bradford, England, in spring 2003 and will open at the Getty Museum in October 2003.