Palgrave Macmillan
Literature and Photography in Transition, 18510915 looks at how British and American writers used early photography and film as illustrations and metaphors. It concentrates on five figures in particular: Henry Mayhew, Robert Louis Stevenson, Amy Levy, William Dean Howells, and Jack London, each of whom deals with the transition between photographic methodologies. The book argues that their writing can be analysed most fruitfully via a consideration of technological difference.
Clayton examines how the transition between different methods affected the ways in which writers rethought photography. His central claim is that nineteenth-century authors were more aware of the particularities of different technologies than has previously been realised. Literature and Photography in Transition contributes to a better understanding of how nineteenth-century writers negotiated visual technologies. It provides a new means by which scholars can read the relationship between literature and early photography.
