Julia Margaret Cameron: soft-focus photographer with an iron will

From her housemaid to Alfred Tennyson, the indomitable Victorian wrestled everybody into her studio, dressing them up as characters from Shakespeare and the Bible. For years, these tableaux have been out of fashion – but two new shows cast this pioneering photographer in a new lightJulia Margaret Cameron was 48 when she was given a camera by her daughter and son-in-law in 1863. The photographs she made – working at first by trial, error and bossiness – were, she absolutely insi