A Pre-Raphaelite Aeneid of Virgil in the Collection of Mrs. Edward Laurence Doheny of Los Angeles, Being an Essay in Honour of the William Morris Centenary 1934. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie 1934.

ANNA COX BRINTON (1887-1969)
A Pre-Raphaelite Aeneid of Virgil in the Collection of Mrs. Edward Laurence Doheny of Los Angeles, Being an Essay in Honour of the William Morris Centenary 1934. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie 1934.
Octavo, limited edition, no. 1 of 150 copies, signed on limitation page by Estelle Doheny, Anna Cox Brinton and Ward Ritchie; parchment-backed boards, title printed in red on spine and upper cover, uncut, minor soiling to covers, elaborate fitted silk-lined brown morocco gilt folding case with separate partition containing 46 letters, cards and other documents, April-June 1934, acknowledging receipt of copies of the Essay: the correspondents include Sir Sydney Cockerell (2 letters and one signed receipt), Graily Hewitt, Seymour de Ricci, May Morris, Bruce Rogers and a number of institutional librarians. Provenance: The Estelle Doheny Collection, The Edward Lawrence Doheny Memorial Library, St John's Seminary, Camarillo, California – Sale Part VI, Christie's, New York, 19 May 1989, lot 2360.

An essay written for the collector Estelle Doheny on the remarkable William Morris/Edward Burne-Jones calligraphic manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid, the climax of Morris's attempt to revive the art of the illuminated manuscript in the early 1870s. The manuscript was purchased by Doheny in 1932: this essay was produced to accompany its exhibition at Mills College to celebrate the Morris centenary. The accompanying letters to Doheny include a number of interesting recollections about the production and history of this most ambitious and opulent of 19th-century manuscripts, including from Sir Sydney Cockerell who writes with some factual corrections for the essay and the somewhat loaded comment that 'Fairfax Murray... intended the MS to come to this Museum [Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge]... the MS was in his house in Italy. After his death I made no claim, as I had nothing in writing to support it... The Vellum Chaucer and the Virgil MS were sold at Sotheby's by one of his sons in Florence... all Burne-Jones's designs for the illustration and initials of the Virgil are in this Museum – They are perhaps the finest thing he ever did'. A letter from Graily Hewitt (who completed the calligraphic text of the manuscript) records 'I am particularly pleased to think that the gilding of that front page has apparently stood well. And you will easily imagine what anxiety was mine in working round that unique miniature of Morris' own hand. The completion of the book was perhaps the most important commission I have ever had'. The legendary bibliographer Seymour de Ricci writes 'I find awaiting me your charming book on a Pre-Raphaelite Aeneid. I appreciate it all the more because the manuscript described is an old friend. Many a times [sic] did I intrude on Fairfax Murray and find him minutely completing some detail of the illumination. That Virgil is one of two or three modern manuscripts with anything like a soul.'

-