Stand There! She Shouted: The Invincible Photographer Julia Margaret Cameron

This accomplished collaboration chronicles the life and work of Julia Margaret Cameron, a 19th-century pioneer of elaborately staged, purposefully out-of-focus photographic portraiture. Cameron's photographs are interspersed with Ibatoulline's (The Matchbox Diary) characteristically lush paintings, the most striking of which are his recreations of Cameron's portrait sittings, where his attention to detail mirrors the photographer's own exacting devotion to her craft. Rubin (Freedom Summer) succinctly traces Cameron's life from a peripatetic childhood split between India and France to her bohemian adult years in England, where literature, art, and theater inspired her dramatically posed portraits. Quotations from Cameron and her subjects (who were forced to sit for hours, sometimes in cumbersome costumes) manifest her strong will and demanding personality. "As a photographer, she was ruthless," writes Rubin. "Children, her favorite subject, feared her." A revealing biography of a passionate, uncompromising artist that simultaneously serves to illuminate the advent of photography and the upper-class Victorian lifestyle. Ages 8%E2%80%9312. Author's agent: George Nicholson, Sterling Lord Literistic. Illustrator's agent: Nancy Gallt, Nancy Gallt Literary Agency. (Sept.)