Thirty years of research are here summarised in one scholarly monograph. Past Masters of the Nude is an annotated bibliography. Specifically, the bibliography attempts to list all the hardback books which were (a) collections of photographs of the nude and (b) published in England between 1896 and 1960. The starting date for the bibliography, 1896, marks the earliest publication, so far as the author can discover, of a book of the kind described. The closing date, 1960, is more arbitrary, but the 1960s saw significant changes in attitudes towards nudity and sexuality in general; for these reasons the author suggests that the years from the invention of photography until about 1960 constitute the 'classical' era of nude photography in England. The overall purpose of this bibliography is to provide information which will be useful to anyone who is interested in photography of the nude.