The photographs:
Idylls and Fancy Subjects
Julia Margaret CAMERON
British, 1815–79
Vivien And Merlin, 1874
From Idylls of the King and Other Poems, volume I, plate VI
albumen silver photograph
26.5 x 31.0 cm
The Wilson Centre for Photography
85:2341
The text that accompanies this photograph is from Merlin and Vivien
published in 1859. It is the sixth book of Tennyson's Idylls of the King.
This photograph depicts the moment when the seductive Vivien entrances the
magician Merlin. Cameron quotes the following text:
"There in one moment, she put forth the charm
of woven paces and of waving hands
and in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
and lost to life and use, and name and fame."
The models here are Cameron's husband, Charles, and Miss Agnes Mangles. The latter wrote a
sarcastic article about her modelling experience in which she noted that
Charles could not stop chuckling and spoiled many negatives.
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