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Talwin Morris. Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (Red Letter Library). London: Blackie & Sons, 1903
“Talwin Morris worked as a book designer from 1893 to 1911, the year of his death. Immersed in the Glasgow Style, he created a body of graphic design uniquely situated between the decline of blind-stamped Victorian publishers' bindings and the appearance of the now ubiquitous dust jacket. Born in 1865 in Winchester, England, Morris moved to Glasgow in 1893 to become the art director for the publisher Blackie & Son (...) During his tenure as Art Director he befriended Charles Rennie Mackintosh and other proponents of the Glasgow Style, a particularly Scottish expression of Art Nouveau. One of Mackintosh's better known buildings, Hill House, designed for Walter Blackie, came about due to Morris' influence. He introduced Mackintosh to Walter Blackie and championed his work. Morris also commissioned book designs from Mackintosh and from a number of other artists in the Glasgow Style circle. His designs also reflected many of the stylistic forms and symbols found in the others' works. Those forms draw on natural shapes such as roses, plants and feathers, but Morris also used linear and architectural motifs in his designs. This combination of natural and linear elements typifies late Art Nouveau in general and the Glasgow Style in particular.”
Lylle Ford. "The Art Nouveau book designs of Talwin Morris". University of Manitoba Research Publications [online]. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2004 http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4449
“Between 1876 and 1883, William Morris incorporated birds in several of his textile patterns. The birds were usually shown in pairs, facing each other and often singing. Partly because it is traditionally an allusion to poets and poetry, the motif was frequently used by Arts and Crafts cover designers of books of verse (...) Talwin Morris (1865-1911) used the same motif on the covers of poetry books in Blackie's Red Letter Library, begun in 1902.”
Malcolm Haslam. Arts and Crafts book covers. Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 2012 (p. 21)