The Last Pre-Raphaelite

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, this is the biography of celebrated nineteenth-century artist Edward Burne-Jones, who - with William Morris - connects Victorian and modern art.

'A triumph of biographical art.' Independent
'Magnificent.' Guardian
'Rarely are biographies both as authoritative and engaging as this.' Literary Review

The angels on our Christmas cards, the stained glass in our churches, the great paintings in our galleries - Edward Burne-Jones's work is all around us. The most admired British artist of his generation, he was a leading figure with Oscar Wilde in the aesthetic movement of the 1880s, inventing what became an iconic 'Burne-Jones look'. Widely recognised as the bridge between Victorian and modern art, he influenced not just his immediate circle but European artists such as Klimt and Picasso.

In this gripping book, award-winning biographer Fiona MacCarthy dramatically re-evaluates his art and life - his battle against vicious public hostility, the romantic susceptibility to female beauty that would inspire his work but ruin his marriage, his ill health and depressive sensibility, and the devastating rift with his great friend and collaborator, William Morris, when their views on art and politics diverged.

Blending new research with a fresh historical perspective, The Last Pre-Raphaelite tells the extraordinary story of Burne-Jones: a radical artist, landmark of Victorian society - and peculiarly captivating man.

Auteur

Fiona MacCarthy established herself as one of the leading writers of biography in Britain with her widely acclaimed book Eric Gill, published in 1989. Byron: Life and Legend was described by A. N. Wilson as 'a flawless triumph' and William Morris, described by A. S. Byatt as 'large, delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail', won the Wolfson History Prize and the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Award. MacCarthy received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography for The Last Pre-Raphaelite, and was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2009. Her most recent book is Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus, which was Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2019.