Victorian botanist, photographer, artist, Renaissance woman: Meet Anna Atkins

Ladyfriends and manfans, you know how I like sentence that includes the phrase, "botanical mentor," and Anna Atkins (1799-1871, above, in an 1861 portrait) had one in William Hooker, according to Ann B. Shtier's marvelous cultural history of 18th- and 19th-century women in science, Cultivating Science, Cultivating Women. I wish I had a botanical mentor. I'm uncertain when persimmons are ripe. I have my eye on a persimmon tree near the shagbark hickory that I have successfully foraged. I can now say with a straight face that my nuts are drying.

[The Shagbark Hickory Nut: Is The Finest Native American Nut?]

Anna Atkins is a monument in #sciart: Victorian botanist, skilled artist, first woman photographer. In 1823, she illustrated her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells, yes, that Lamarck, from the mists of time that is whatever you remember from high school biology class. (I mostly remember looking at a butterfly wing under a microscope.)

I am stunned by the detail and delicacy of these.
I want this so much as wallpaper. 

Atkins printed and published Part 1 of British Algae in 1843.

This was the first photo-illustrated book, ever.  

"At that time, botany -- specifically the study of seaweed -- was one scientific field in which women were sometimes able to participate." Small confetti canon.

Photo credits:

Portrait of Anna Atkins, albumen print, 1861, public domain
Anna Atkins - Drawings for Lamarck's Genera of Shells, 1823 Publication: Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts, Volume XVI, John Murray, London, 1823, Pl V
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1843 - 1853. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-4af4-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.