Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1892. First edition. From the library of Edward Burne-Jones, with his bookplate. A Very Good+ copy. Octavo. Decorative woodcut border to first page of text, six- and ten-line woodcut initials. Original stiff vellum, spine lettered in gilt. Foot of spine a little bumped, binding a little soiled, lacking silk ties, gatherings unopened, occasional light foxing.

Burne-Jones designed books for the Kelmscott Press between 1892 and 1898. At the end of his life, the artist wrote: “Morris’s friendship began everything for me; everything that I afterwards cared for." Morris and Burne-Jones met in 1853 as undergraduates at Exeter College, Oxford. Bonded by a mutual admiration for medieval culture and a desire to resist industrialization’s impact on art, they abandoned their divinity studies and, at the suggestion of their friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, moved together to London. Their collaboration became one of the most defining creative partnerships of the arts and crafts movement, shaping its ideals through their work in painting, design, and book arts.

The publishing of the Biblia Innocentium, written by Edward Burne-Jones' son-in-law J.W. Mackail, was somewhat fraught. Burne-Jones was to have illustrated the book with approximately two hundred wood-engraved illustrations, though the artist only completed twenty-five, which were ultimately not included in the book (they were later published in The Beginning of the World: Twenty-Five Pictures by Edward Burne-Jones in 1902). Nevertheless, the book is a lovely example of Kelmscott production, ornamented with the press's signature woodcut initials and decorative woodcut borders.

The bookplate is recorded by Peterson as one of ten designs printed at the Kelmscott Press during 1897 and 1898.

Peterson A9; D10 (example 2). Very Good + (Item #7711)