One of the most popular books of the Middle Ages, The Golden Legend is a collection of the lives of the saints, compiled in the mid-thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar who became Archbishop of Genoa in 1292. Morris had hoped to make it the first product of the Kelmscott Press — hence the name given to the typeface in which it was printed — but he was hampered in not owning a copy of Caxton s 1483 edition, which had to be transcribed (by Phyllis Ellis, daughter of the scholar-publisher R S. Ellis) from a copy borrowed from Cambridge University Library. Eventually published in September 1892, it was universally admired, Swinburne calling it "the most superbly beautiful book that ever, I should think, came from any press." 1 Burne-Jones provided two designs, both of which appear in the first volume. The Earthly Paradise (facing page 105) depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from a stone-walled Garden of Eden, while The Heavenly Paradise (facing page 245), displayed here, offers a further variation on the type of battlemented celestial architecture drawn for the Book of Common Prayer (cat. no. 106), given to Frances Graham. Each image first appears in the "Secret" Book of Designs (cat. no. 140), and there is a preliminary drawing for Adam and Eve in the Newberry Library, Chicago. 2 J. W. Mackail recorded that both designs "were touched up for the wood-engraver [W. H. Hooper] by Mr. Fairfax Murray in a photographic copy." 3 One of these copies has survived, of the first subject, though it bears an inscription by Sydney Cockerell to the effect that the correc- tions were made by Burne-Jones himself. 4 1. Quoted in Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, no. 0.15. 2. British Museum, London (1899-7-13-478, 479); see also Stam 1978, pp. 339744- 3. Mackail 1899, vol. 2, p. 279. 4. Arts Council 1975-76, no. 282 (private collection).
Burne-Jones, Edward FOUR PRINTED ILLUSTRATIONS, COMPRISING: 1) illustration for The Golden Legend (facing page 245), ink printing on vellum, 285 by 210mm., minor soiling at extremities; 2) illustration for Love is Enough (facing page 90), assumed proof printing on paper (without border), 290 by 211mm., some spotting and soiling; 3) 'Iris and Turnus' from The Collected Works of William Morris, Vol 11, 1911 (facing page [vii]), photogravure, 286 by 222mm., some spotting; 4) 'Aeneas and the Harpies' from The Collected Works of William Morris, Vol 11, 1911 (facing page [xxv]), photogravure, 286 by 222mm., some spotting The first item here is especially interesting in that there were no vellum copies of The Golden Legend issued by the Kelmscott Press. Sotheby's 2015