Amelia Elizabeth Guppy grew up in Herefordshire, England and studied under the painter and writer David Cox. Amelia eloped with Robert Guppy, a lawyer, and they lived for a period in Trinidad. The English collector, Sir Thomas Phillipps later approached Guppy about photographing items in his vast collection. Her simple, hand-sewn albums include paper calotype negatives and salted paper prints. The images include extraordinarily precise views of a Babylonian clay cylinder and a fragment of a Babylonian inscription stacked on top of two leather-bound books.