Capturing the Light

Roger Watson is a world authority on the early history of photography. He is currently the Curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey and an occasional lecturer at DeMontfort University in Leicester.Helen Rappaport is a historian with a specialism in the nineteenth century and revolutionary Russia. She is the author of eight published books, including Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs and Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy.

• Section - i: List of Illustrations Section - ii: Prologue: My First Daguerreotype Chapter - 1: The Locked Treasure Room Chapter - 2: Shadowgrams Chapter - 3: The Box of Wonders Chapter - 4: An Inheritance Chapter - 5: The Panorama Chapter - 6: An Innate Love of Knowledge Chapter - 7: More Beautiful than Nature Chapter - 8: Lacock Abbey Chapter - 9: Seeking the Impossible Chapter - 10: The Heliograph Chapter - 11: The Melancholy Artist Chapter - 12: Fixing the Image Chapter - 13: The Latticed Window, August 1835 Chapter - 14: The Magic Cabinet Chapter - 15: The Most Wonderful Discovery Ever Made Chapter - 16: From Today, Painting is Dead Chapter - 17: Photogenic Drawing Chapter - 18: The Académie des Sciences, August 1839 Chapter - 19: Daguerreotypomania Chapter - 20: Portraiture Chapter - 21: The Pencil of Nature Chapter - 22: The Monopoly of the Sunshine Chapter - 23: The Great Exhibition of 1851 Chapter - 24: The Reluctant Inventor Chapter - 25: Art or Science? Chapter - 26: The Mute Testimony of the Picture Chapter - 27: The Eye of History Section - iii: Epilogue: Everyman’s Art Acknowledgements - iv: Acknowledgements Section - v: Notes Section - vi: Bibliography Index - vii: Index

‘The history of photography told as a fierce race between two rivals . . . Reads like a scientific thriller’ Observer‘Cheerfully readable … the authors’ enthusiasm for those pioneering days of photography, the drama and the sense of something fabulous just over the horizon, is catching.’ Sunday Telegraph