Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (1812–81)

Abstract

Occasional references have been made in connection with the earliest years of photography to the name of Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, emerging in the 1840s as a shadowy figure on the fringe of the pioneering activities of the remarkable circle of neophytes gathered around Sir David Brewster at the United Colleges of St Salvator and St Leonard in the city of St Andrews, Scotland.¹ He was one of the first persons, if not the very first,² to experiment extensively in Ireland with the positive-negative paper process which Henry Fox Talbot had patented in England in 1841, and he pursued the goal with enthusiasm and constancy which is demonstrated by his own lively accounts of his successes and his tailures. Further research reveals that he had been experimenting with the photogenic drawing as early as t 839 while still on active duty in India. Thus, he steps into the limelight as one of the very first photographers on that sub-continent.³