Luminous, demurely sensual, and richly imagined, the albumen prints that Clementina, Lady Hawarden made in her brief career are rediscovered in this first-ever biography. Hawarden was a pioneer photographer of the mid-1800s, when few women received recognition in the visual arts. Upon visiting the 1864 Photographic Society of London exhibition where Hawarden won a silver medal for the superb composition of her photographs, Lewis Carroll wrote. "The best of the life-ones [are] Lady Hawarden's.".

An aristocratic Victorian wife and mother, Hawarden primarily photographed her three eldest daughters amid the sumptuous natural surroundings of the family's estate in Ireland and, most often, in her sun-drenched house in London. Like most women of their day, Hawarden and her daughters were clearly bound by home and family life, but in making these enigmatic pictures they created a world apart.

Drawing inspiration from their dress-up boxes, the girls masqueraded in lavish costumes and acted out mysterious dramas for their mother's camera.