Henry William Taunt (1842–1922) was a professional photographer, author, publisher and entertainer based in Oxford, England.

In 1885 he engaged a boy, Randolph Adams, who rose to be Taunt's assistant and became an expert photographer and developer.

He built photographic and printing premises in its grounds and renamed the house Rivera to reflect his love of the River Thames.

This was a substantial honour in recognition of the notable feat of cartography and accuracy of measurements that featured in the New Map of the Thames.

The New York Times considered Taunt's guides to the Thames to be "as essential as the boat for a successful journey".

Carr's executors locked Taunt out of the shop, held its fitting as security and demanded £225 plus legal costs and a year's rent.

But Taunt had already accumulated £1,300 in bad debts, his liabilities exceeded his assets by almost £119, so he gave up his Broad Street premises and filed for bankruptcy.

[14] In 1908, as a member of the Ancient Order of Druids' Albion Lodge at Oxford, he took the famous picture of Winston Churchill's initiation into the AOD at Blenheim Palace.

[14] One of his wartime cards, published in 1915, bore on one side a poem called Good Luck and Safe Return and, on the other, a space in which to paste a photograph under the title "Never Forgotten at Home".

From childhood he loved the river, boating on it and frequently on Trill Mill Stream, a Thames tributary in Oxford.

[3] At Christmas in 1859, aged 17, Taunt boated solo from Oxford upriver to Lechlade in Gloucestershire and back.

[citation needed] In 1872 Taunt published A New Map of the River Thames on a scale of 1:126,720 (half an inch to a mile).

[14] The wet collodion process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer, was the best means to capture negative images on glass until the end of the 1870s, by which time many of Taunt's pictures for his Illustrated Map of the Thames had been taken.

He left his entire estate to Fanny Miles, who with her sister Polly remained at Rivera for some years thereafter.

A local historian alerted the Oxford City librarian, who in 1924–25 bought several thousand of Taunt's negatives and some of his prints, papers and manuscripts, for £98 10s.