On 17 February 1875, Cameron wrote and dated her autobiographical essay 'Annals of My Glass House' at Dimbola, Freshwater.
On 17 February 1875, Julia Margaret Cameron composed and dated "Annals of My Glass House," a short but vivid autobiographical account of her entry into photography, written at her home Dimbola in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. The essay recounts, in her characteristically expressive prose, the gift of her first camera in December 1863 and her early struggles and triumphs mastering the wet collodion process.
Though left unpublished during her lifetime and only printed posthumously, the manuscript has become an invaluable primary source for historians of photography, offering a first-person narrative of the technical and emotional experience of pioneering a new art form as a woman in Victorian England. In it, Cameron describes her working methods, her passionate devotion to capturing "the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man," and her joy at her earliest successes.
"Annals of My Glass House" is significant not only as a rare firsthand account by one of the era's foremost photographic artists but also as an early example of a woman explicitly claiming authorship and artistic intent over her photographic practice, at a time when photography's status as fine art was still contested and women's contributions to science and technology were routinely marginalized. The essay remains widely cited in photography history and museum scholarship, including by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.