Julia Margaret Cameron and Jane Austen are both luminaries of the 19th century who explored the inner lives of women in their respective fields, photography and fiction. The legacies of these two trailblazing British women converge with the Morgan Library & Museum’s concurrent exhibitions A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron. Both draw on the women’s visual and literary archives to illustrate the complexities and historic significance of their lives.
Writing in the late 18th and early 19th century, amid the rise of the British middle class and the constraints of rigid gender roles, Austen captured the desires and anxieties of women with needle-sharp precision. In her prose, the interiority of her characters is composed of suppressed longing, quiet rebellion, and moral reflection. A Lively Mind immerses visitors in Austen’s world through manuscripts, portraits, and period interiors that together evoke the atmosphere of her life and work.
Upon entering the exhibition, a small table with a wooden chair displays a quill and handwritten letters, set against a backdrop of leafy green wallpaper. This tableau recreates Austen’s writing desk from the dining room of her home in Chawton, England, now preserved as a museum. A photograph of the historic house hangs above, anchoring the display in its real-world setting.
The modest recreation of Austen’s writing desk contrasts with the wooden bookshelf nearby, which moves from the intimate to the global, displaying Pride and Prejudice translations in several different languages. Austen’s imprint is evident across various artistic forms, countries, and generations. A glass case displays rare books from the 19th century, all biographical accounts of the author, by writers such as Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen and Oscar Fay Adams; on the wall behind it are portraits of her, including a miniature watercolor on ivory by an unidentified artist and a steel engraving by William Home Lizars.
Generations later, the fascination with Austen persists — when I visited, the excitement was palpable around two standout objects on display: a recreation of Austen’s lustrous silk jacket and her famed ring. The gold and turquoise ring — on view in the United States for the first time — sparked debate over what artifacts are too historically significant to leave England after singer Kelly Clarkson temporarily acquired it at auction in 2012.
Another major highlight is Amy Sherald’s painting of a young Black man wearing a sweater featuring architectural designs, “A Single Man in Possession of a Good Fortune” (2019). The title is inspired by the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, which references the entanglement of wealth, gender, and marriage: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” That such a line might resonate with young Black men in 21st-century America speaks to the endurance and reach of Austen’s writing. A Lively Mind offers a visually striking and archivally rich exploration of Austen’s life and legacy. By combining recreated interior design elements with books, portraits, and even contemporary art, the exhibition effectively conveys her lasting relevance across historical and cultural contexts.
Across the hallway, Arresting Beauty examines the life and work of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Though not as widely known as Austen, Cameron is deeply significant to the history of photography; her soft-focus, allegorical portraits exemplify her titular desire to “arrest all beauty that came before [her].”
Installation view of Julia Margaret Cameron’s “Florence Fisher” (1872), “The Astronomer” (1867), “The Annunciation” (1865-66), “The Red and White Roses” (1865), “Daisies Pied” (1870-74), and “Prospero and Miranda” (1865) in Arresting Beauty at the Morgan Library & Museum.
Cameron’s dreamy photographic gaze is immediately apparent in the six works created between 1865 and 1872 that open the show, each portraying a different sitter. A tender close-up portrait of “Florence Fisher” (1872) depicts the daughter of a friend who sometimes posed for Cameron. “The Astronomer” (1867), a shadowy portrait of Cameron’s scientist friend, Sir John Herschel; it reflects the Victorian-era fascination with science and philosophy. A spiritual portrait, “The Annunciation” (1865–66), portrays models acting out the story of archangel Gabriel’s declaration to the Virgin Mary, while the floral motifs in “The Red and White Roses” (1865) and “Daisies Pied” (1870–74) symbolize Victorian ideas of femininity and purity in pastoral scenes.
Cameron’s life was punctuated with periods of deep sadness and loneliness, and her photographs often evoke similar feelings. The models express quiet moments of solitude and reflection. Her oeuvre is replete with themes related to Christianity, well-known literature (especially for a Victorian audience), and young women. In one particularly moving photograph, “Sappho” (1865), Cameron’s maid, Mary Hillier, poses as the ancient Greek poet from Lesbos. Despite the Victorian sensibilities regarding women’s domestic and subservient roles, Cameron imbued her photographic subjects with agency and depth; women and girls, whether amateur models, servants, or family friends, are almost always the protagonists. In 1874, she worked particularly strenuously on a series of photographs illustrating Alfred Tennyson’s narrative poetry cycle Idylls of the King (1859–85) upon the writer’s invitation.
A copy of Cameron’s posthumously published memoir on view shows the mark of her hand as a writer. Her daughter died in 1873, and the following year she published Annals of My Glass House, in which she draws heart-wrenching parallels between her career as a photographer and the life of a growing child.
Amid financial issues, Cameron and her husband left England for Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1875. Her intimate relationship to the British Empire is undeniable; she was a White, British woman who was born in India and died in Sri Lanka. “A Group of Kalutara Peasants” (1878) and “Two Young Women” (c. 1875–79), made in the final years of her life, struck me as particularly indicative of colonial dynamics. Both photographs depict mainly anonymous plantation workers who worked for the Camerons. The contrasting distance between the labor of the photographer and the plantation worker is uncomfortable. Scholars have often maintained that such images show more kindness toward their subjects than those of other British photographers, with their sharp colonialist gaze. Still, I wonder if the softness and vulnerability communicated in Cameron’s work should necessarily excuse the brutality of imperialism upholding her position as a photographer in the colonies. Perhaps this dynamic begets ambivalence more so than either celebration or detraction. Whether she photographed her own social circle in England or working women in Sri Lanka, Empire remains the backdrop.
Austen and Cameron were exceptionally talented and creative women whose legacies often appear more benevolent than those of many others from their social class and imperial context. Still, it is crucial to grapple with the colonial structures — and the labor of colonized women and communities — that helped sustain the lives and work of these pioneering artistic figures often celebrated as feminist heroes. What would it mean to admire these women’s creative brilliance while acknowledging the inequalities that shaped their worlds? Whose stories remain untold behind their celebrated legacies? And how might we expand our understanding of feminist art and literary history to make space for those voices?
Both exhibitions gesture toward the privilege and power these women held within their social worlds, yet I am left wondering about the perspectives of marginalized women of their eras. Without discounting the artistic and literary contributions of Austen and Cameron, or the overall gender hierarchies of the time, might these unacknowledged experiences challenge or complicate the ways we now read the feminist dimensions of the women at the center of these exhibitions?
A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250 and Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron continue at the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan) through September 14.
A Lively Mind was organized by Dale Stinchcomb and Juliette Wells. Arresting Beauty was organized by Joel Smith and Allison Pappas.
Editor’s Note, 7/23/2025: An earlier version of this review misidentified the subject in Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph of John Herschel; this has been corrected.
