Stern childhood stricture instructs us not to stare at strangers. In his fascinating new book, Keith Steiner releases you from those long ago remonstrances and licenses you to roam at will over the photographed faces of personages of the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The author makes no distinction between those born high or low, so we can, at will and at leisure, engage in depth with prisoners, with spies, with persons of elegance and with persons of ill repute. The author introduces you to Jane Brown, a Victorian prisoner in Perth General Prison, Scotland, and to John Brown, radical abolitionist of antebellum America, the youthful, nascent poet Emily Dickinson, and to Jennie Hodgers, one of several hundred women estimated to have fought in disguise alongside their male soldier comrades during the American Civil War.

Keith Steiner is a well-practised author and commentator on the theory and philosophy of photography and historic photography. His text encounters his subjects in both widescreen and in intimate dialogue.