English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Her mother Hester Anne died in 1800. She became close to her father John George Children, who was a scientist of many interests; for example, he was honoured by having the mineral childrenite and the Children's python, Antaresia childreni, named after him. She "received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time." Her detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father's translation of Lamarck's Genera of Shells, which was published in 1823. She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825, and they moved to Halstead Place, the Atkins family home in Sevenoaks, Kent. She then pursued her interests in botany, for example by collecting dried plants. These were probably used as photograms later. John George Children and John Pelly Atkins were friends of William Henry Fox Talbot. She learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and Calotypes. she was known to have had access to a camera by 1841. Some sources claim that Atkins was the first female photographer Other sources name Constance Talbot, the wife of William Fox Talbot, as the first female photographer. As no camera-based photographs by Anna Atkins or any photographs by Constance Talbot survive, the issue may never be resolved. Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and Children, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed "by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper". She produced a total of three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. Only 17 copies of the book are known to exist, in various states of completeness. Copies are now held by, among other institutions Atkins produced a total of three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. Only 17 copies of the book are known to exist, in various states of completeness.