When Seashells, Ferns, and Seaweed Went Viral

What’s the Victorian-era version of posting a TikTok video about a new Labubu? Perhaps arranging a seaweed collection in a scrapbook and displaying it proudly in the parlor.

The phrase “going viral” didn’t exist during the Victorian era, but that doesn’t mean people didn’t get swept up in trends much like they do today. In the 19th century, many of those fads revolved around the natural world. Seashells, ferns, and seaweed enchanted (and were believed appropriate for) women in particular—including Anna Atkins (1799–1871), a British botanist and photographer known today as the creator of the world’s first book illustrated with photography.

The new monograph Anna Atkins: Photographer, Naturalist, Innovator (Getty Publications), by photography historian Corey Keller, explores Atkins’s fascinating life as a woman who participated in trends certified “acceptable” for ladies at the time while also contributing to artistic and scientific circles dominated by men.

“She’s really on the border between being well within the bounds of women’s life and out of bounds, and that tension is what becomes interesting,” Keller says.

Like many other women of her day, Atkins found herself drawn to some very specific aspects of nature that reflected the dramatic shifts facing the world in the 19th century.

A blossoming obsession with nature

During the Victorian era (named for the reign of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901), a perfect storm of societal and scientific changes sparked a passion for the natural world, particularly in Europe and the United States. Industrialization meant more people than ever were living in big cities, which were dirty, smoky, crowded, and devoid of green space. City dwellers longed for the clear skies and calm energy of the countryside and seashore, and visits to nature were believed to enhance one’s health.

At the same time, new fields like naturalism (the study of nature, a precursor to what we now call science) and botany were flourishing. Leaders in these fields, such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Carl Linnaeus, had studied the characteristics of animals and plants and had organized them into categories. In addition, scientific instruments such as microscopes and optical devices like the camera, magic lantern, zoetrope, stereo viewer, and phenakistoscope became popular forms of entertainment. They offered Victorians new ways to see their world.

“Looking at things under a microscope was considered an exciting and educational activity, and when you looked at a flower or a leaf and you saw all its minute details, that was also a way of connecting you back to the idea that God had created all the world, and you could see his design all the way down through the microscope,” Keller says.

Botany was considered an especially “polite” and enriching activity for women—well suited to their “natural” femininity and possible to enjoy and study without leaving one’s own garden. But even within botany, women were limited to studying and collecting certain types of “acceptable” plants at home, while men were allowed to publish papers and participate in scholarly societies.

Appropriate nature for the ladies

Out of all the plants and animals in the world, why did seashells, ferns, and seaweed become trendy? Let’s start with seashells. The seashore was considered a healthy and intellectually and spiritually enriching place for women to spend their time. Plus, seashells were easy to gather, relatively clean, and didn’t require any special equipment to deal with, making them an ideal collector’s item for the “delicate” sex. And scientists were just beginning to take invertebrates seriously as a subject of study.

Ferns and seaweed were popular for similar reasons: they could be easily gathered by simply walking around in nature. But they also share another characteristic that made them especially appropriate for women: asexual reproduction.

“Because all the classification was based on the reproductive organs of the plants, if you talked about ferns or seaweed, you didn’t even have to go near that,” Keller explains. “In general, sexuality was not considered something women should be spending their time thinking about.”

Going viral in the 19th century

In an era before the Internet, books and word of mouth were the keys to “going viral.” People learned about different types of seashells, ferns, and seaweed through publications, such as guidebooks sold in vacation destinations, that explained where to find different specimens.

These trends also spread socially. Budding collectors participated in organized picnics and nature outings. Women could also see specimens on display in each other’s residences. Crafting was a popular form of entertainment for “well-bred” ladies who were expected to spend most of their time at home, and women often incorporated their collections into projects. Think lamps covered in shells, pottery and gowns adorned with seaweed-inspired designs, and even custard cream cookies decorated with a fern motif.

After the invention of an early type of terrarium called the Wardian case, women even grew ferns in their homes.

“The Victorian parlor was just crammed full of stuff,” Keller says. “It was not an austere place by any stretch of the imagination.”

The fern mania, in particular, went so viral that several varieties went nearly extinct from overcollecting.

Anna Atkins, photographer/botanist

While many women participated in the botany trends via crafting and collecting, Atkins took her interest in a unique direction by blending art and science.

First, as a young woman, she painstakingly drew 256 seashells featured in Lamarck’s Genera of Shells, which her father translated as part of his work in the British Museum’s Department of Natural History and Modern Curiosities.

Then, she took up the medium she would become most known for: the cyanotype.

A cyanotype is a form of cameraless photograph created when an object (in Atkins’s case, a plant specimen) is placed on a piece of paper coated with a light-sensitive solution. A sheet of glass is placed on top of the paper, flattening the specimen, and then the paper is exposed to the sun. After a few minutes, the glass and specimen are removed, and the paper is washed in clean water. A white “shadow” of the specimen remains on the paper, which has now turned a vibrant blue (cyan) due to the sunlight’s reaction with the chemicals on the paper. The cyanotype process was invented by Sir John Herschel.

Atkins became so proficient and passionate about cyanotypes of plant life that she made the first-ever book illustrated entirely with photographs: the three-volume Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. The books contained cyanotypes of seaweed specimens that she and her network of “botanical friends” had collected and labeled with their Latin names. By the time she finished the third volume in 1853, 10 years had passed. Each three-volume set contained around 400 cyanotype prints.

She made just a few copies of each volume and distributed them to friends in the scientific community. Later that year, she made another book of cyanotypes in collaboration with her best friend, Anne Dixon: Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, followed in 1854 by Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns, which contained a broad sampling of plants from weeds to flowers to ferns. Atkins and Dixon continued to make cyanotypes together until around 1861.

Atkins was never considered a “real” scientist like her male peers, and her work was not distributed widely or taken seriously as a scientific or artistic accomplishment until the 20th century. However, Keller points out that there’s really no evidence Atkins wanted a serious career as a scientist or photographer. In the Victorian era, people believed a woman’s place was in the home, not pursuing a career. Atkins seems to have found joy and fulfillment in her own unique way of participating in traditional female trends—going against the assumption we often have today that all women wanted to disrupt the status quo.

“I think we would love to think of her as someone who wanted to be a nuclear physicist but couldn’t,” Keller says. “But I think she took something that was a traditionally acceptable women’s activity and saw how to do it in a much more modern and innovative way, and that’s what I find the most exciting about it.”

Read more about Atkins in Anna Atkins: Photographer, Naturalist, Innovator, available at the Getty Store.