Early Life
Anna Children was born in Tonbridge, Kent, England in 1799. Her mother Hester Anne didn't recover from the effects of childbirth" and died in 1800. Anna became close to her father John George Children, who was a scientist of many interests; for example, he was honoured by having the mineral childrenite and the Children's python, Antaresia childreni, named after him. She "received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time." Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells, which was published in 1823.
Cyanotype
Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and Children, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper.
Photography
John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Fox Talbot. Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes.
Atkins was known to have had access to a camera by 1841. Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer. Other sources name Constance Talbot, the wife of William Fox Talbot, as the first female photographer. As no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins or any photographs by Constance Talbot survive, the issue may never be resolved.
Later Life and Work
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).