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Notes: From the Collection of James B. Parks.

The mounted plates include Plate II "View of the Boulevards at Paris" * Plate VI "The Open Door" * Plate IX "Fac-simile of an Old Printed Page" * Plate XI "Copy of a Lithographic Print" * Plate XVII "Bust of Patroclus" * Plate XVIII "Gate of Christchurch" * Plate XIX "The Tower of Lacock Abbey" * Plate XX "Lace."

The unmounted plates include Plate IV "Articles of Glass" * Plate V "Bust of Patroclus" * Plate VII "Leaf of a Plant" * Plate XIII "Queen's College, Oxford, Entrance Gateway" * Plate XV "Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire."

with--"Melrose Abbey," ruins ("LA 37") * "The Tomb of Sir Walter Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey," ("LA 31"). Together, 2 prints from Talbot's "Sun Pictures from Nature." Salted paper prints from calotype negatives, sizes approximately 5 3/4x8 1/4 and 6 3/4x7 inches (14.6x21 and 17.1x17.8 cm.), all with the notations "LA," in ink, on verso. 1844

William Henry Fox Talbot published The Pencil of Nature beginning in 1844 as a means of announcing his invention of the negative/positive process using a paper negative. The culmination of a decade's worth of work, the publication's six fascicles featured 24 plates as well as accompanying text detailing the history of Talbot's invention and its possible uses. Offered here as a series of 13 plates both mounted and unmounted, these images—busts of classical figures, rows of glass bowls and vases, 'The Open Door,' a lone delicate leaf, and the grounds of his own Lacock Abbey, among others—reveal Talbot to be a revolutionary scientist as well as an exquisite artist.