A Circle of Sisters Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter and Louisa Baldwin by Judith Flanders

The Macdonald Sisters - Alice, Georgiana, Agnes and Louisa - started life among the ranks of the lower-middle classes, with little prospect of social advancement. But as wives and mothers they made a single family of the poet of Empire, Rudyard Kipling, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy, and the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. In telling their remarkable story, Judith Flanders displays the fluidity of Victorian society, and explores the life of the family in the nineteenth century. 

 The Macdonald Sisters:  From left: Alice Macdonald Kipling (mother of Rudyard) at 53, 1890; Georgiana Macdonald Burne-Jones, wife of the artist, in 1900 at the age of 60; Louisa Macdonald Baldwin, several years before her death in 1925 at 79 (she was Stanley Baldwin's mother); Agnes Macdonald Poynter in her 50's, sometime in the 1890's (her husband was director of the National Gallery).  Photos courtesy Helen Macdonald/National Portrait Gallery/From "Circle of Sisters"

'They were, in many ways, absentee wives and mothers; they accrued power to themselves by their fragility. They were vortexes around which family life whirled. No one could fail to be aware of them, but it was awareness of an absence, not a presence.'  Judith Flanders, A Circle of Sisters 

 The book cover of A Circle of Sisters is Green Summer by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1868.

Although, I have read two biographies on The Macdonald Sisters, it is this sweet novella about them that I loved most of all. Judith Flanders, retells the chronological life of not only the sisters and their families but includes their famous husbands to be! The presence of artists and the genius of creativity envelops every page. Perhaps, my most favorite aspect of, 'A Circle of Sisters' by Judith Flanders are the quotes of letters by Lady Burne-Jones, her husband Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Ned) and his famous Pre-Raphaelite mates William Morris, John Ruskin Dante Gabriel Rossetti, including Swinburne and The Prinseps.

How I wish I could crawl into the memories held within these pages. Not necessarily go back in time but let the words, the memories of these beautiful artists bring me to their world permanently.  Oh, to walk around the hallway of Rottingdean, Red House, and Kelmscott. To see little May and Jenny Morris tottle about the passages over creaky wooden floorboards disturbing Ned and Topsy in their studios! To see the wives, Georgie, Janey, and Lizzie, huddled together, seated in the kitchen or living room in their long dresses listening, talking, sewing catching up on their lives and how their rambunctious husbands are annoying them!