Category: Book reviews

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More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs

When I visited A New Power, the Bodleian Library’s photo-history exhibition which ran earlier this spring, I was fascinated to learn how daguerreotype images were used to produce wood engravings which then became the basis for newspaper illustration, an application of the daguerreotype process of which I had been totally unaware, and so I turned … Continue reading More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs

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Julia Margaret Cameron and The Glass House by Jody Cooksley #photohistory #PhotographyinFiction @theglasshousenovel

Julia Margaret Cameron Regular readers will know I’ve always had a soft spot for Julia Margaret Cameron whom I first encountered many years ago when working as a trainee in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. As a result, I took up an interest in photo-history and the following year I picked photography as a ‘specialist subject’ on … Continue reading Julia Margaret Cameron and The Glass House by Jody Cooksley #photohistory #PhotographyinFiction @theglasshousenovel

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‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1

‘Truths needn’t depend on facts for their expression.’ The quote is from Tom Crewe’s author notes for his novel The New Life. It’s a book I think will be noticed for its unselfconscious depiction of sex between men, but I also admire it as an example of how history can be melded into create great … Continue reading ‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1