Eminent Victorians: 19th-century celebrity portraits – in pictures

As a new picture of Billy the Kid goes on sale for $1m, these photographs showcase some of the most significant people of the 19th century to be captured on camera

Main image: The actor Sarah Bernhardt relaxing in a salon. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Thu 21 Nov 2019 16.32 GMT Last modified on Thu 26 Mar 2020 14.26 GMT

  • Billy the Kid

    (1859-81) The American outlaw, born Henry McCarty, killed eight people before being shot dead at the age of 21. This new photo of the criminal (second from the left) playing cards, which is said to be only the second in existence of him, is being auctioned in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November and is expected to sell for $1m (£770,000).

  • Mary Seacole

    (1805-81) Photographed here in 1873, she was born in Jamaica to a local woman and a Scottish soldier. She learned nursing skills at her mother’s boarding house for invalid soldiers. In 1854, she used her own money to help casualties of the Crimean war, tending injuries on the battlefield and setting up the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide “a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”. In 2004, “Mother Seacole” was voted the greatest black Briton.

  • Edgar Allan Poe

    (1809-49) The American author, photographed in 1839, was famous for macabre tales such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher. He is also credited with inventing the modern detective story with The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

  • William Frederick Cody

    (1846-1917) Better known as Buffalo Bill on account of his prestigious bison-hunting abilities, he was an American soldier and showman who rose to prominence during the years of the American frontier. One of the most famous figures of the old west, his cowboy-themed circus shows toured the US and Europe and featured a range of performers such as sharpshooters, cowboys and storytellers, as well as reenactments of famous battles from the American civil war and the American Indian wars.

  • Millicent Fawcett

    (1847-1929) The writer and activist, captured c1870, campaigned for women’s rights in the UK as the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage from 1897 to 1919. Widely regarded as one of the most influential feminists in British history, she played a pivotal role in helping women get the vote in 1918.

  • Helen Keller

    (1880–1968) (on left) The American author became deaf and blind after contracting a mystery illness when she was 19 months old. She was taught how to read, write and speak by her teacher, Anne Sullivan (1866–1936) (right). The pair, photographed in 1897, became lifelong companions. Keller documented her struggles and their friendship in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, which was turned into a Hollywood film called The Miracle Worker.

  • Walt Whitman

    (1819-92) Captured here c1870, Whitman is widely considered to be one of the most influential poets in the American canon. His prose-like poetry has seen him heralded as the father of free-verse. His work often focussed on the natural world and current events (the American civil war and the death of Abraham Lincoln), with common recurring themes including war, individualism, patriotism and the body.

  • Sarah Bernhardt

    (1844-1923) The French actor was the stage superstar of her age and described by Victor Hugo as having a “voice of gold”. She notably took on male roles such as Hamlet, before going on to perform in some of the earliest films. Known for her eccentricities, she toured with an alligator called Ali-Gaga who drank champagne, and a coffin that she was said to sleep in.

  • Ida B Wells

    (1862–1931) She was born into slavery in Mississippi but freed during the American civil war. As a pioneering journalist and editor, she worked tirelessly to expose racial injustice. She spent months travelling alone around the American south to investigate the horrors of lynching, and campaigned against segregation. In 1910, she co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

  • Florence Nightingale

    (1820–1910) The nursing pioneer was first described as the Lady of the Lamp in a despatch in the Times from the Crimean war. “When … silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds,” the report noted. Upon her return to Britain, she established the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. This, along with her book Notes on Nursing (1859) is considered the beginning of professional nursing.

  • Annie Oakley

    (1860-1926) The American exhibition shooter made her name in Ohio, aged 15, by winning a contest against Frank E Butler, whom she went on to marry. The pair took their talents on tour as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and she performed all over the world, including for Queen Victoria. She also campaigned for women to be allowed to join the armed forces. Her story was immortalised in the musical Annie Get Your Gun.

  • Sojourner Truth

    (c 1797-1883) Born Isabella Baumfree in New York state, the African American lived in slavery until she escaped with her daughter in 1826. She then took on a white man in the courts to be reunited with her son, who has been illegally sold into slavery, and won – the first victory of its kind. Truth dedicated her life to the abolition movement and women’s rights, helping to liberate many slaves, and is renowned for her “Ain’t I a woman?” speech of 1851.

  • Ellen Terry

    (1847–1928) When this photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron was taken in 1863, 16-year-old Terry – one of 11 children, five of whom acted – had already been on the stage for seven years. It was also the year of her first marriage, to the artist George Frederic Watts, who was 30 years her senior. During a seven-decade career, Terry was especially revered for her interpretations of Shakespeare’s women, often developed in association with the actor-manager Henry Irving.

  • Harry Houdini

    (1874-1926) Photographed here in the 1890s, Houdini was many things: magician, actor and aviator. But he was best known for his amazing escapes – from earth-filled graves, handcuffs, metal cans, straitjackets, tanks full of water, packing crates at the bottom of rivers … After cheating death so many times, he was finally felled by a ruptured appendix.

  • Frederick Douglass

    (1818–95) Pictured here in 1848, Douglass was born a slave and did not know his date of birth, so chose it for himself. And he chose his future, too, which was first to learn to read and write, and then to run away. He became a bestselling author, abolitionist, women’s rights campaigner, newspaper editor and orator who was the first black man to be received by a US president (Lincoln). Believing that the objectivity of photographs was an important counter to the subjectivity of painted portraits, he also deliberately became the most photographed American of his time.
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