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:
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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
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She sleeps a charmed sleep
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Goes singing as it leaps along
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Here 's my half of the golden chain
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www.florenceharrison.com/ or the book below:
Florence Harrison: A Case of Mistaken Identity
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
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| 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
My heart is like a singing bird