Editing Julia Margaret Cameron (section)

=== Later life ===
In October 1873, her daughter died in childbirth. Two years later,<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> because of her husband's ill-health,<ref name="National Gallery of Art" /> the lower cost of living,<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}} and to be near to their sons who were managing the family coffee plantations,<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> Cameron and her husband left Freshwater for Ceylon with "a cow, Cameron's photographic equipment, and two coffins, in case such items should not be available in the East".<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Britannica Academic" />

Henry Taylor recounts the departure:<blockquote>Mr. and Mrs. Cameron have taken their departure for Ceylon, there to live and die. He had bought an estate there some thirty years ago when he was serving the Crown there and elsewhere in the East, and he had a passionate love for the island, to which he had rendered an important service in providing it with a code of procedure ... he never ceased to yearn after the island as his place of abode, and thither in his eighty-first year he has betaken himself, with a strange joy. The design was kept secret, – I believe even from their dearest relatives.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|36}}</blockquote>V.C. Scott O'Connor later wrote about their empty home in Freshwater:<blockquote>The house is silent now and tenantless. All its old feverish life and bustle are stilled as is the heart which beat here in true sympathy with every living creature that came within its reach needing such succor. Her pretty maids, her scholars, her poets, her philosophers, astronomers, and divines, all those men of genius who came and sat willingly to her while in a fever of artistic emotion she plied the instruments of her art, – they have all gone, and silence is the only tenant left at Dimbola.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|37}}</blockquote>The move marked the end of Cameron's photography career;<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> she took few photographs afterwards,<ref name="National Gallery of Art" /> mostly of [[Tamils|Tamil]] servants and workers.{{Efn|Cameron described these subjects as "natives", much as she referred to the residents of the Isle of Wight as "peasants".<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" />|name=|}}<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|9}} Fewer than 30 images survive from this period. Cameron's output may have dropped in part because of the difficulty working with collodion in the heat and a lack of fresh water for washing prints.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}} The botanical painter and biologist [[Marianne North]] recounted a visit to Cameron in Ceylon:<blockquote>The walls of the room were covered with magnificent photographs; others were tumbling about the tables, chairs, and floors with quantities of damp books, all untidy and picturesque; the lady herself with a lace veil on her head and flowing draperies. Her oddities were most refreshing . . . She also made some studies of natives while I was there, and took such a fancy to the back of one of them (which she said was absolutely superb) that she insisted on her son retaining him as her gardener, though she had no garden and he did not know even the meaning of the word.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|483}}<ref name="Angels and Instincts" /> </blockquote>In 1875, after a short visit to England, Cameron fell ill with a dangerous chill.<ref name="Art Story" /> 

In February 1876, ''Macmillan's Magazine'' published her poem, ''On a Portrait''. The following year, her image ''The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'' appeared on the cover ''Harper's Weekly'' as a wood engraving.<ref name="The Complete Photographs" />{{Rp|9}}

Cameron died on 26 January 1879<ref name="Victoria and Albert Museum" /> at the Glencairn estate in Ceylon.<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" /> It is often reported that her last word was "Beauty"<ref name="Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography" /><ref name="Oxford Companion to the Photograph" /> or "Beautiful".<ref name="Britannica Academic" />

In her 12-year career, Cameron produced about 900 photographs.<ref name="Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" />