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The Pencil of Nature (1844-46)

by William Henry Fox Talbot

About The Pencil of Nature

About The Pencil of Nature
Part I.
Publisher's note, frontispiece, and title page.
Introductory Remarks.
Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art.
Plate I. Part of Queen's College, Oxford.
Plate II. View of the Boulevards at Paris.
Plate III. Articles of China.
Plate IV. Articles of Glass
Plate V. Bust of Patroclus.

Part II.
Plate VI. The Open Door
Plate VII. Leaf of a Plant
Plate VIII. A Scene in a Library
Plate IX. Fac-simile of an Old Printed Page
Plate X. The Haystack
Plate XI. Copy of a Lithographic Print
Plate XII. The Bridge of Orleans.
Part III.
Plate XIII. Queen's College, Oxford, Entrance Gateway
Plate XIV. The Ladder.
Plate XV. Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

Part IV.
Plate XVI. Cloisters of Lacock Abbey.
Plate XVII. Bust of Patroclus.
Plate XVIII. Gate of Christchurch
Part V.
Plate XIX. The Tower of Lacock Abbey
Plate XX. Lace
Plate XXI. The Martyr's Monument
Part VI.
Plate XXII. Westminster Abbey
Plate XXIII. Hagar in the Desert.
Plate XXIV. A Fruit Piece.


The first edition of The Pencil of Nature was published in London by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans between June 1844 and April 1846, issued in six separate parts or fascicles. A single design appeared on the covers of all six fascicles. The original prints with which he illustrated it were produced in the Talbotype Establishment he set up at his estate, Lacock Abbey. The fascicle number and price were added by hand (in the upper left-hand and right-hand corners, respectively) as each number appeared. Some copies contain, laid in, a "Notice to the Reader," as follows: "The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid from the artist's pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation." We offer here the complete text, with most of of the images, plus the original publisher's note promoting the project.

The Pencil of Nature is many things at once: a pioneering technical manual, a history of a radical invention, a practitioner's credo, a visionary's prophecy about the future of a new medium. Talbot's opening essay -- "Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art" -- and his other texts accompanying the individual plates restate and amplify the ideas he expressed in his 1839 treatise, "Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing," available elsewhere in this Archive. -- A. D. C.


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