a biography of the day-anna children atkins (botanist, photographer-1st book with photos)

[niyad]

Anna Atkins (Maiden name Anna Children) (16 March 1799 – 9 June 1871[1]) was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images.[2][3][4] Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph.[3][4][5][6]


She was born in' Tonbridge, Kent, England in 1799.[1] Her mother Hester Anne "didn't recover from the effects of childbirth " and died in 1800.[5] Anna became close to her father John George Children,[7] who was a scientist of many interests; for example, he was honoured by having the mineral childrenite and the Children's python, Antaresia childreni, named after him.[8] She "received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time."[9] Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells, which was published in 1823.[9][10]
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John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Henry Fox Talbot.[9] Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes.[11][12]

Atkins was known to have had access to a camera by 1841.[9] Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer.[3][4][5][6][13] Other sources name Constance Talbot, the wife of William Fox Talbot, as the first female photographer.[14][15][16] As no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins[9] or any photographs by Constance Talbot[15] survive, the issue may never be resolved.
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Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843.[2] Although privately published, with a limited number of copies, and with handwritten text, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions is considered the first book illustrated with photographic images.[2][3][4][17] Eight months later, in June 1844, the first fascicle of William Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature was released; that book was the "first photographically illustrated book to be commercially published"[18] or "the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs".[19]


Atkins produced a total of three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853.[20] Only 17 copies of the book are known to exist, in various states of completeness.[21] Copies are now held by, among other institutions:[5][7]
Because of the book's rarity and historical importance, it is quite expensive. One copy of the book with 411 plates in three volumes sold for GBP 133,500 at auction in 1996.[7][20] Another copy with 382 prints in two volumes which was owned by scientist Robert Hunt (1807-1887) sold for GBP 229,250 at auction in 2004

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Atkins