page_title: Anna Atkins
section_title: Later life and work
hierarchical_section_title: Anna Atkins / Later life and work
context_page_description: Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph.
context_section_description: In addition to Photographs of British Algae, Atkins published five fictional novels between 1852 and 1863. These included The Perils of Fashion, Murder will Out: a story of real life, and A Page from the Peerage. 
  In the 1850s, Atkins collaborated with Anne Dixon (1799–1864), who was "like a sister" to her, to produce at least three presentation albums of cyanotype photograms:
  Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853), now in the J. Paul Getty Museum;
  Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854), disassembled pages of which are held by various museums and collectors;
  An album inscribed to "Captain Henry Dixon," Anne Dixon's nephew (1861).
  Atkins retained the algae, ferns and other plants that she used in her work and in 1865 donated the collection to the British Museum.
  She died at Halstead Place in 1871 of "paralysis, rheumatism, and exhaustion" at the age of 72.
caption: Cyanotype photogram of Wood Horsetail from the 1853 book Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns by Atkins and Dixon
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