BURNE-JONES, Edward (1833-1898), was born in Birmingham, and educated at King Edward’s School, where it was noted “he was not strong enough to play games; that he delighted in poetry and especially in Ossian” (DNB, 340).  He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford in 1852 intending to take orders in the Church of England.  His Welsh parents were members of the Church of England, but their influence on Burne-Jones’ aspirations toward the clergy is not well documented.  At Oxford, Burne Jones met a fellow Welshman, William Morris (q.v.), and with him helped to create the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine--successor in spirit to the Pre-Raphaelite Germ.
	Burne Jones, both singly and with Morris, spread a romanticized version of the Middle Ages, and is best know for his depiction of diaphanously-clothed androgynes arranged as medieval romance figures.  Burne-Jones took his subjects from his reading, and was especially fond of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s (q.v.) poetry.  Burne-Jones met Rossetti after sending him an adulatory letter in 1856, and soon became a follower (DNB, 341).  Rossetti introduced Burne-Jones to the poetry of Dante Alighieri, Chaucer (especially The Canterbury Tales), and Greek mythology.  Many of Burne-Jones’ most celebrated paintings, including the Pygmalion  and the Briar Rose panels, are decorated with verse on the frames and on scrolls included in the paintings’ compositions (Phillips, 287).  Burne-Jones and Morris were especially keen on early French medieval texts, such the Song of Roland, which shows up in many of Burne-Jones’ visual allusions to medieval armor styles and idealized perspective (Colvin, 18).
	In addition, Burne-Jones, like the Pre-Raphaelites before him, also avidly read the Romantic poets and their successors; Frederic George Stephens, art critic for Portfolio, says that Burne-Jones’ Love Among the Ruins “recalls Mr. [Robert] Browning’s [(q.v.)] lines on the same subject” (Stephens, 6).  Burne-Jones brought “a sense of aestheticism back into the public eye” (Lago, 45), and his paintings were often the result of many years of work.  His legacy is most easily seen in the diversity of media in which he worked: oils, watercolors, stained glass, tapestry, and woodblock printing.
Archives.
Correspondence of Frederick George Stephens, Bodlein Lib. (MSS. Don. E.78, d. 116-119, e. 57-87).
Printed Sources.
Ash, Russell, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993).
Bell, Malcolm, Sir Edward Burne-Jones: A Record and Review (New York: AMS Press, 1973).
Colvin, Sidney, “English Painters of the Present Day.  III.  Edward Burne-Jones,” Portfolio 1 (Feb. 1870), 17-22.
Fitzgerald, Penelope, Edward Burne-Jones (London: Sutton, 1997).
Fredeman, William E., Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study (Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1965).
Lago, Mary, ed., Burne-Jones Talking, His Conversations 1895-1898: Preserved by his Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke (London: Books on Demand, n.d.).
Phillips, Claude, “Edward Burne-Jones,” Magazine of Art 8 (1885), 286-294.
Stephens, Frederick George, “Mr. Edward Burne-Jones, A.R.A., as a Decorative Artist,” Portfolio 20 (Nov. 1889), 214-219.
Wolsey, Thomas Hale, “Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley,” The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, Ed. Sidney Lee, 23 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1901), Vol. 3, 340-344.
Thomas J. Tobin
Duquesne University