Published to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Britain's celebrated inventor of photography, Specimens and Marvels illuminates the mid-nineteenth-century cultural environment in which Talbot's vision for photography emerged--a vision that would permanently alter how human beings view themselves and the world.

This unprecedented publication focuses on Talbot's ambitions for the mystical blend of science and art he termed "photogenic drawing" (later called "photography"), as outlined in his classic The Pencil of Nature.