A book with a colourful embroidered cover. The background is a red brocade silk. At the centre of the cover a round view of Windsor Castle is framed by the blue ribbon of the Order of the Garter, embroidered with its motto 'Honi soit qui mal y sense.' Above and below are further ribbons bearing quotes from the play ('Strew good luck ouphes in every sacred room/ That it may stand till the perpetual doom'), strung across a backdrop of oak leaves and acorns. On the book's spine, the title 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' can be seen embroidered in blue thread, and the date A.D. 1914, with further oak leaf and acorn motifs.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, illustrated by Hugh Thomson 

William Shakespeare

1910-17

Embroidered book

26.2 x 20.1 x 4.8 cm

RCIN 1059106

Image credit: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021

In 1914, Katharine Denison, obscure sister of an Anglo-Catholic vicar, embroidered and re-covered this edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor as a gift for Queen Mary.

It is illustrated by the watercolourist Hugh Thomson (1860-1920), celebrated for his gentle depictions of rural English life and literature. Katharine Denison's plant motifs, oak leaves and acorns reflect the pastoral tone of Thomson's pictures, but they also emphasise the play’s royal links – as does the view of Windsor Castle framed by the Order of the Garter.

Denison presented the book to Queen Mary in 1917, three months before the royal family announced they would change their name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to ‘Windsor’. It was a move with inevitable echoes of this most ‘English’ of Shakespeare’s plays.


You can view the inside of another Thomson edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor below.

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