In the special issue of the Art Journal devoted to his life and career Crane explained the origin of the commission to illustration Spenser: George Allen, who had taken over the publication of the Shakespeare plays from Dent & Co.,

about this time proposed an illustrated edition of “Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” which, curiously enough,had been a dream of mine in earlier days, as the antique form, the beauty and chivalric romance, with the vivid allegory, and fine sense of decorative detail of Spenser’s poetry were extremely alluring. The task, therefore, of designing aseries of full-bordered pages, one, and sometimes two, to each canto or the six books of the poem, besides headings, initial letters, and tail-pieces to each canto, though formidable, was a congenial one, and I undertook it with peculiar interest. The exigencies of publication demanded the delivery of the material for one part each month, which meant very close and continuous work, difficult enough, when circumstances obliged one to attend to other work at intervals, to say nothing of the continuity having to be broken every month by a visit to the Manchester Municipal School of Art. The work was commenced in the summer of 1894, and the last designs were sent in at Christmas, 1896. [12]

Bibliography

The Work of Walter Crane with Notes by the Artist. The Easter Art Annual for 1898: Extra Number of the “Art Journal”. London: J. S. Virtue, 1898. Internet Archive version of a copy in the Getty Art Institute. Web. 3 January 2018.

The Studio, [London] 9 (1897): 123.

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