Described by the art critic John Russell Taylor as ‘one of the most original and accomplished of all the art nouveau book artists in Britain’, Jessie M. King assimilated the influences of Burne-Jones, Beardsley and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and developed a body of work that is individual and instantly recognisable. She and her artist-designer husband E.A.Taylor had long and peripatetic careers starting in their native Glasgow where both were important contributors to the circle around Charles Rennie Mackintosh developing what subsequently became known as The Glasgow Style. In the early 1900s they lived for several years in Paris where they founded a successful art school called ‘The Sheiling Atelier’ until the First World War forced them back to Scotland. However they had found time to indulge in cafe society amongst the set that included Matisse, Utrillo, Marie Laurencin and fellow Scots Peploe and J.D. Fergusson. Back in Scotland they split their time between the Isle of Arran and the artists' community in Kirkcudbright for the rest of their lives.

Jessie King provided the illustrations to over 100 books for leading publishers such as Bodley Head and the Edinburgh house TN Foulis. The present work, produced for George Routledge’s 1906 edition of John Milton’s maske Comus,  lies opposite the lines:

Elder Brother: My sister…
… she has a hidden strength,
[…]
Which …
’Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:
She that has that is clad in complete steel