THE FLOWER BOOK EDWARD BURNE JONES

The Flower Book consists of thirtyeight watercolours, tiny roundels, each some six inches across. In his list of works BurneJones described them as a series of illustrations to the Names of Flowers. He used traditional flower names as steppingstones into his own imaginative world: as his wife put it, not a single flower itself appears. She wrote of BurneJones s aims in detail in her introduction to the 1905 facsimile of the book: At first he thought any lovely or romantic name would lend itself to his purpose, but soon found. .. that comparatively few were of use. Such as had too obvious a meaning as for instance ODIN S HELM or FAIR MAID OF FRANCE, he rejected because there was not any reserve of thought in them for imagination to work upon. A picture, he held, should be no faint echo of other men s thoughts, but a voice concurrent or prophetical. It was easy enough, he said, merely to illustrate, but he wanted to add to the meaning of words or to wring thei