Fine Books & Manuscripts

[BURNE–JONES, Edward] (1833–1898, see bookplate). –– BURNE–JONES, Georgina. Memorials of Edward Burne–Jones. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904. 2 volumes, 8vo. Half–titles, 40 engraved plates including frontispieces with tissue guards, numerous in text woodcuts. Contemporary half vellum parchment over blue–white linen, olive and wine morocco spine labels gilt, gilt fillets and centerpieces in compartments, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. Provenance: Frances Horner, nèe Frances Graham (bookplate in both volumes, DESIGNED BY EDWARD BURNE–JONES, with woodcut of two cherubs holding a shield with the letter “F”). Frances “was a close friend of the painter Sir Edward Burne–Jones, who designed this bookplate for her, probably in 1892.” Several of his letters that mention her are quoted in this text (see vol. II, pp. 130–131) including one to Ruskin in 1883 which he reflects on the many portrait drawings he produced that were based on Frances including “Sirens for her girdle, Heavens & Paradises for her prayer–books, Virtues and Vices for necklace–boxes’.” Frances was one of eight children of Burne–Jones’s staunchest and most sympathetic patron, William Graham. Frances, 18 years old at the time, and EBJ, a “man of forty, just approaching his full fame”, became close confidants with one another as it was the strength of character, her intellectual curiosity, and her depth of sympathetic understanding that Burne–Jones appreciated. Upon EBJ’s death in 1898, Herbert Asquith, later British Prime Minister, wrote to Frances to express his sympathy: “I can hardly imagine anything that could tear a greater gap in your life or create such a breach between the future and the past,” he informed her. “He gave you always of his best, and it must be some solace to you to remember that up to the end you above all others lightened and enriched his difficult life.” A LOVELY ASSOCIATION COPY. Lee, British Bookplates 130; British Museum 1912,0930.34. From the private library of a prominent Chicago collector, part II.