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Maine Grad Student: Picture of Poet a Rare Find

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A Maine graduate student says an old photographic portrait of English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson hanging in a South Berwick home is a rare artifact made by 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

University of Southern Maine student Robin Whitham Acker identified the photograph of the British poet laureate on a library wall at the Sarah Orne Jewett House. She and officials with Historic New England say the photograph is by Cameron, an English photographer famous for Victorian-era portraits. University officials say one of Cameron's photographs sold for nearly $90,000 in 2011.

Acker says she noticed the photograph last year while taking a tour of the house. She says the Maine novelist and poet may have acquired the picture on a trip to England where she visited Tennyson.