Poems by Christina Rossetti with Illustrations by Florence Harrison, 1st Part

There was some dispute whether Florence Harrison was Emma Florence Harrison. However, the artist was definitivly Florence Susan Harrison  (1877–1955) who was Australian. For the whole discussion see:
www.florenceharrison.com/  or the book below:

 Florence Harrison: A Case of Mistaken Identity

In 1908 Blackie commissioned Harrison to illustrate a major gift book destined specifically for the adult market as part of their Fine Art Series. This appeared as Poems by Christina Rossetti. Such was the success of this venture that it soon led to contracts for two similar volumes entitled Guinevere and other poems (Tennyson, 1912) and The Early poems of William Morris (1914).

Harrison never married and with the death of her friend Dinnis at the height of the Blitz she moved to Brighton to live with her cousin Isobel. She was then in her early sixties and remained there until her death in 1955. Her remains lie in an unmarked and untended plot in Hove Cemetery, together with those of her cousin.


Harrison's enduring legacy of beauty remains in her portfolio of works, including some early images that stand alongside those of the very best illustrators Britain has ever produced. I am pleased to have been able to discover her true identity and hope that my efforts will in some small way compensate for her relative anonymity in the 60 years since her passing. May she now take her rightful place alongside the other better-known illustrators of the early 20th century.
Mary Rosalind Jacobs
November 2006

 Frontispiece

And like a queen went down

Pale in her royal crown

 Sucked their fruit globes fair or red

 O Laura, come

White and golden Lizzie stood

For your sake I have braved the glen 

And had to do with goblin merchant men

Through the dark my silence spoke like thunder

 Hark! the bride weepeth

Tedious Land for a Social Prince

If she watches go bid her sleep

So the Prince was tended with care

 You should have wept her yesterday

So they went forth together

 Ah woe is me! Whom I have seen

Are now as though they had not been

My ladies are all fair to gaze upon

 I, if I perish, perish. In the name of God I go

She sleeps a charmed sleep

 Goes singing as it leaps along

Here 's my half of the golden chain

My heart is like a singing bird