Lecture by Dr. Lynn Hulse
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Zoom at 3 pm EDT
*Lecture followed by a presentation of this year's birthday cake and toast
Lecture by Dr. Lynn Hulse
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Zoom at 3 pm EDT
*Lecture followed by a presentation of this year's birthday cake and toast
During the long nineteenth century (1789-1914), technologies proliferated to make books into beautiful objects that combined illustration with verse, uniting the 'sister arts' of painting and poetry. The Sister Arts: Fashioning the Victorian Luxury Book explores the ways that luxury book manufacture came to provide roles for women in the book arts, initiating a sisterhood of illustrators, illuminators, engravers, designers, compositors, and even publishers. The manufacture of these beautiful books provided women with the opportunity to adopt a range of professional roles in the book world.
Alongside masterpieces of the fine press, books made and designed by women are featured throughout the exhibition, including Victorian albums and annuals; publications by Emily Faithfull’s Victoria Press and the Yeats Sisters’ Cuala Press; an illuminated manuscript by Lady Louisa Strange; and books featuring women artists, including Phoebe Anna Traquair, Jessie M. King, Anne Lydia Bond, and HRH Princess Beatrice. Highlights of this exhibition include the 1857 Moxon Tennyson, with Pre Raphaelite wood engravings ; two manuscripts illuminated by Alberto Sangorski; the elephant folio edition of Henry Noel Humphreys’s guide to The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (1849); decadent Belles Lettres limited editions; and the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896), widely agreed to be the most beautiful book ever printed in English. Focused on British publications, the scope of the exhibition extends from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the onset of the First World War.
by Dr. Suzanne Fagence Cooper
George Bernard Shaw called her ‘the silentest woman I ever met’. And
Henry James said she was ‘an apparition of fearful and wonderful
intensity’. But these famous descriptions do Jane Morris a disservice.
As a model for Gabriel Rossetti, she became Queen Guenevere, Pandora or
Persephone. But should we accept that these images reflect the reality
of Jane’s life and character? With the publication of her letters,
edited by Jane Marsh and Frank L Sharp, we can recreate a fully rounded
picture of the lives of both Jane and William Morris, their family and
their close circle. As we read Jane’s words, we can reconsider the
creativity of the women who pioneered the Arts and Crafts movement. Jane
was an outstanding embroiderer, and ran the needlework department of
Morris and Company for over a decade. She built a network of female
friends and colleagues, and hosted poets, anarchists and artists at her
homes in Kent, London and Oxfordshire. For the first time, we can see
how she and William Morris worked together to develop a radical
household. As he said, ‘the true secret of happiness lies in taking a
genuine interest in all the details of daily life’.