Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was born in Calcutta in 1815, one of seven daughters to a man known as the biggest liar in India. After being educated in Europe, she returned to the Cape of Good Hope where she met Charles Hay Cameron, whom she married in 1838. On Charles's retirement in 1848, they moved to London where Julia became part of Kensington's artistic community, including poet Henry Taylor, painter G.F. Watts and Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The gift of a camera from one of her daughters in 1863 sparked an enthusiasm in Julia Margaret Cameron for this new art form. Within a year she had begun to present her friends with albums of her work and was elected a member of the Photographic Society in London. She outraged society by becoming an experimental photographer, though because of her refusal to retouch, many considered her a bungling amateur. Then, in 1875, at the peak of her fame as photographer, her husband wanted to return to his sons in India so that he might be with them for his last years. She gave it all up, and the Camerons departed for Ceylon.