Friar Street, Reading, c. 1893

Henry Taunt was an English photographer and publisher, born in Oxford in 1842. He is best known for his photographs of Oxford and the River Thames, taken between the 1860s and 1910s. Taunt began his career as a bookseller and publisher, but soon turned to photography. He opened his first photographic studio in Oxford in 1869 and quickly gained a reputation for the quality of his photographs of the city. In the 1870s Taunt began to concentrate on photographing the River Thames. He published a series of albums of his photographs of the river, which proved popular with tourists and locals alike. Taunt was also an early adopter of new photographic technologies such as collotype, which allowed him to produce high quality prints in large quantities. Taunt continued to photograph Oxford and the River Thames until his death in 1922. His photographs are now highly prized by collectors and historians as they provide a unique insight into life in Victorian and Edwardian England.