[5] Anna was close to her father John George Children, a renowned chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist.

[8] Anna Atkins learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper and exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotypes.

Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins and Children, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842.

[5] Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843.

[2] She planned to provide illustrations to William Henry Harvey's A Manual of British Algae which had been published in 1841.

[24] In 2018, the New York Public Library opened an exhibition on Atkins' life and work, featuring various versions of Photographs of British Algae.

[39][40] Atkins' work was a major feature in the New Realities Photography in the Nineteenth Century exhibition held in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, June – September 2017.