Jane Burden was born in Oxford from a poor background. She received limited education. She married William Morris in 1859 and soon managed to educate herself and be accepted in the circles frequented by her husband. She allegedly was the model for the heroine in the 1884 novel Miss Brown, by Vernon Lee (pseudonym for Violet Paget), which again led to the character of Miss Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw's 1914 play, Pygmalion (and that of the film My Fair Lady).
Digital source of illustration (retrieved 30 January 2017).
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The Day Dream, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1880. The model is Jane Morris. The painting is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, acc. no. CAI.3 (online catalogue; retrieved 30 January 2017). This is the last painting completed by Rossetti. Jane is holding a sprig of honeysuckle, which may have symbolised her romantic affair with the painter. The title of the painting is also that of one of Rossetti's poems, which ends with the words: She dreams; till now on her forgotten book / Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand