Il Decamerone: A Tale from Boccaccio

The subject matter is taken from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, a series of novellas written in the 14th Century, narrated by a group of young Florentines who tell stories to entertain themselves as they hide in isolation away from the Black Plague ravaging their city. In 1899 Byam Shaw illustrated a new edition, Tales from Boccaccio done into English by Joseph Jacobs, and the present drawing was engraved and used as the Frontispiece.
Sir George Herbert Duckworth (1868-1934), a public servant, was the son of Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, and Julia Prinsep Jackson, niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. After her husband's death Julia Duckworth married the author Leslie Stephen, and Sir George was therefore half-brother to Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. In September 1904 he married Lady Margaret Herbert (1870-1958), a daughter of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Caernarvon, and in 1927 he was knighted.