Michael Pakenham Edgeworth
M.G. Jacob has graciously provided the following additional information (7 December 2017)
In the biographical note from
Ipmessed by Light, it is suggested that the Irish novelist, Maria Edgeworth, may have introduced her younger half-brother, Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, to photography in 1839-40:
His sister was a friend and correspondent of Sir David Brewster's, and it was perhaps through this connection that Edgeworth first learned of photography.'
This information is misleading, as a reading of the Edgeworth papers and letters in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, reveals. Pakenham (the name by which MPE was known within the family) did, indeed, learn of the earliest photographic experiments from a sister, but not from the half-sister who had been corresponding with Sir David Brewster since 1823.
Frances (Fanny) Maria Edgeworth (1799-1848) and Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (1812-1881), were very close, issue of the fourth marriage of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), while Maria Edgeworth the novelist (1768-1849), was the first fruit of Richard's first marriage.
Pakenham served in the East India Company, and Fanny wrote to him frequently at Saharunpoor in Bengal, informing him of the latest developments in photogenic drawing as an aid to his botanical studies. Pakenham first mentions experimenting with photography in his Journal on 1st December, 1839. On 28th January, 1840, he began
to prepare paper according to new rules sent out by Fanny in her last letter... the sun came out and I tried my new paper - which succeeded so well in a way - so well as to encourage me to proceed.
By 20th May, 1840, he had obtained ...Ackermann's Photogenic Drawing Apparatus, which I saw advertised and got up from Calcutta accordingly.
Although none of these early botanical proofs survive in his herbaria, Pakenham must surely be considered as a photographic pioneer, perhaps the first in the Indian sub-continent. And it is likely that Fanny tried her hand at photography when Pakenham returned home to Ireland on extended leave in April, 1842, where he continued to experiment with both the calotype and daguerreotype processes.
Fanny also encouraged Maria Edgeworth to pose for her daguerreotypes at Richard Beard's first studio at the Polytechnic Institution in London in 1841 (see Jacob, A Visit to Mr. Beard's, The Daguerreian Annual, 1994: 162). Fanny should have gone to the studio that day, too, but she was ill and stayed at home. Her husband, Lestock Wilson, accompanied Maria and Honora Edgeworth to have their likenesses taken.
