Photograph of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, half length portrait, head almost profile right. He holds a book in his left hand. 'From Life'. Signed by Tennyson.

Julia Margaret Cameron first met Tennyson in London, at the literary salon of her sister Sarah Prinsep. From 1860 she became Tennyson’s neighbour on the Isle of Wight. In 1863 Cameron acquired her first camera, and after much pleading was permitted to take this photograph of the poet. Tennyson named this image ‘The Dirty Monk’ and preferred it to almost any other image of him.