Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art released a flood of images for public consumption, including a collection of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs that aren't currently on view at the Museum. A pioneer in the field, Cameron not only crossed gender lines in her work, she also secured on film some of the Victorian era's most noted men and women of the arts, letters, and society. Intimate and inviting, her photographs remain some of our closest encounters with the intellectual legends of the nineteenth century.
Tennyson Reading, 1865
Robert Browning, 1865
George Frederick Watts, 1864
Thomas Carlyle, 1867
Minnie Thackeray, 1865
Sir John Herschel, 1867
Julia Jackson, 1867
All images via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.