Lot 305: Richard Beard (1801 - 1885) Maria Edgeworth, c.

Richard Beard (1801 - 1885) Maria Edgeworth, c. 1841 A daguerreotype photograph of the Irish author, 8 x 7cm Contained in a fitted case, bearing the trade emblem of Beards Photographic Institution, 31 King Street and The Royal Polytechnic Institution, London Edgeworth was one of the first people to be daguerreotyped in England and there are several portraits of Edgeworth by Beard. She seems to have been an enthusiastic sitter and remarkably receptive to this new invention as she features in daguerreotypes and rare calotypes. Maria Edgeworth was a writer, born in Oxfordshire, England in 1767 but spent a lot of her life in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. She wrote on the subject of education, class, race and gender. Some of her most well-known publications are Castle Rackrent (1800); Moral Tales for Young People (1805) and Tales of Fashionable Life (1809). She died suddenly in Edgeworthtown in 1849 at the age of 82. Richard Beard was born in Devon in 1801. During the 1830s he moved to London and became involved in a variety of entrepreneurial projects, by 1840 there was a great deal of excitement and buzz over the new photographic processes of Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot. In 1841 Beard opened the first professional photography studio in the country at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and shortly after this he established a chain of these studios around London.