First separate edition of the proofs the wood-engravings cut by Morris et al. after Burne-Jones, no. lxviii of 100 sets. In the 1860s William Morris had planned an edition of his poem The Earthly Paradise to be illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones had drawn some 60 or 70 illustrations for the ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ section of The Earthly Paradise. Some 50 of the illustrations were engraved as woodcuts – 36 or more of these by Morris himself, on the only occasion on which he is known to have engraved woodblocks – but the projected edition was abandoned. An edition was then begun in 1897 by the Kelmscott Press, but only seven specimen pages were printed and the edition was once more abandoned after Burne-Jones’s death in 1898. 44 of the woodblocks cut for the projected book were bequeathed by May Morris to the Society of Antiquaries of London, where they remained unnoticed until 1968. ¶¶

Following the rediscovery of the woodblocks, Will and Sebastian Carter’s Rampant Lions Press printed their remarkable edition of this ‘lost’ Kelmscott in 1974, using the Society of Antiquaries blocks together with Kelmscott Press Troy types loaned by the Cambridge University Press. The edition was divided into three parts: 130 sets of the two printed volumes together with a portfolio of collotype prints of the 47 drawings and a set of proofs of the 44 wood-engravings; 270 sets of the two printed volumes; and 100 portfolios ‘containing a set of proofs of the 44 wood-engravings’ (as here). The portfolio contained proofs of the wood-engravings printed on individual sheets of paper made by J. Barcham Green, which retain their deckles, together with a stitched quire of four ll. with a ‘Note on the Engravings for “The Story of Cupid and Psyche”’ and a pictorial index of the engravings with identifications of the engravers of individual blocks. ¶¶

S. Carter, The Rampant Lions Press: A Narrative Catalogue, 121; R.L.M. Coupe, Illustrated Editions of the Works of William Morris in English, 4.5c. ¶¶¶