Daguerre's process, as noted in previous posts, took the world by storm, and the discovery was published in a host of languages, most notably in books that were printed the very year that the process was gifted to the world by the French government (1839):
However...a week before France announced its gift to the world (12 August 1839) Daguerre himself had registered a patent for his process in Great Britain. As things turned out, Great Britain would be the only nation where Daguerre's patent was ever enforced.
As early as 1834, an English polymath, William Fox Talbot, had engaged in photographic experiments of his own, building upon discoveries made by the astronomer John Herschel (who posited that hyposulphite of soda could be used to permanently fix photographic images) and the noted pottery manufacturer Thomas Wedgwood (who developed a means of copying visible images chemically to permanent media). Reading of Daguerre's process, Talbot scrambled to stake his own claim to priority of discovery, revealing the details of his process to members of Great Britain's Royal Society several months before Daguerre fully divulged the details of his own process.
Because Talbot patented his calotype process two years later (1841), he greatly limited adoption of the process. This, despite the fact that his book depicting the results of this process, The Pencil of Nature, would become one of the most influential books of photography ever published.
The first photographically-illustrated book to be commercially published, The Pencil of Nature was originally issued in parts, though thereafter reprinted numerous times in book form:
Only about fifteen complete sets of the original publication-in-parts are believed to exist, with perhaps another two dozen substantially complete sets also known. Containing 24 original salted paper prints from paper negatives, the parts were issued over a two-year period (June 1844-April 1846). Published to promote his patented process, The Pencil of Nature was not initially a commercial success, and Talbot abandoned its publication before a seventh set of plates was prepared. Talbot's supporting prose text, however, often was as attractive as his photographs, and history would judge this landmark publication much more favorably....
This is one of the trifling efforts of [photography’s] infancy, which some partial friends have been kind enough to commend. We have sufficient authority in the Dutch school of art, for taking as subjects of representation scenes of daily and familiar occurrence. A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time withered oak, or a moss covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings....
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