Guest and Memories: Annals of a seaside villa by 'Mrs Cameron' [CAMERON, Julia Margaret] (photographic plates); TAYLOR, Una [Ashworth]; WALKER, Emery (plate printer)

FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. vii, [1], [2], 430, [2] + seven b/w plates, comprising four "taken from a photograph by Mrs Cameron", incl. the photogravure frontispiece portrait (with tissue guard), produced by Emery Walker (as is the final plate, 'Theodosia Alice Taylor', "from a painting by G.F. Watts, R.A."), plus a facsimile letter from Robert Louis Stevenson. Edges untrimmed. Original blue buckram, cream spine label to spine (faded and chipped). Board edges and extremities bumped, band of fading to front board. PO inscription, below glue residue to front pastedown, very occasional grubby fingerprint or ink stain to text block, spine cracked at pp.416-7, but binding firm. Else, internally clean and tidy. A robust copy of an unusual biography, twinning two pioneering Victorians of visual media. Uncommon in the trade, but fairly well represented in British and Irish research libraries. Good+ An account of the later life of playwright, Byronic poet and Victorian man of letters, Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886) at his Bournemouth villa, where the family played host to dozens of literary and artistic celebrities including Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dodgson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, G. F. Watts and Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). A good friend of the photographer, Taylor sat regularly for her, both as himself and in various theatrical guises. Cameron is known for her portraits of significant Victorian public figures, including John Herschel, Charles Darwin and Ellen Terry, as well as those of her family, including her niece, Julia Jackson, mother of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen (who wrote a short review of this title). Rather than dwell on her important and innovative role in photography, The London Mercury review depicts the photographer's everyday self: "Cameron resplendent, untidy, human, lives and glows for us, her fingers stained with chemicals, her extravagant heart pouring forth generosities, her friendship for 'Philip dear', as she called Henry Taylor, most evidently an impassioned one."