The Dirty Monk', Alfred Lord Tennyson, May 1865

Photograph entitled 'The Dirty Monk' taken by Julia Margaret Cameron in May 1865. Albumen contact print from wet collodion negative. This photographic portrait of the poet Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) forms part of the Herschel Album, created by Cameron for her friend Sir John Herschel (1792-1871). This is perhaps the most famous of all Cameron's portraits. Tennyson himself referred to it as 'The Dirty Monk'. Tennyson was the most popular poet of the Victorian period. He was made Queen Victoria's poet laureate in 1850.