The Bard and the Petty Tradesmen

This drawing was sketched in a letter from DGR to Jane Morris of 2 May 1868. It is a parodic design for a newspaper DGR imagines that William Morris will now have to launch since “it is now the fashion for successful men in any walk of literature to start a newspaper”. DGR is thinking of the recent publication of the first installment of Morris's The Earthly Paradise. The reference of “Petty Tradesman” is of course to Morris's firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co., and “Lord Campell's Act” references the Chief Justice's act of 1857 suppressing obscene publications.