Book Description
British Art Critic Frederic George Stephens Began His Career As A Painter And Was An Early Member Of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He Was A Prolific Writer, And This Book, Based On His Personal Familiarity With Painter And Poet Rossetti Was One Of His Best Known Works. ... Read more

Book Description
A major poet, writer, and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was seen as the dominating cultural presence in the second half of the nineteenth century.He founded the Pre-Raphaelite movement, revised and reimagined Blake's project of marrying images and texts,and was a shaping influence on Modernist aesthetic ideas and practices.His translations are original poetical works in their own right. Jerome McGann, a leading figure in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, presents a generous selection of Rossetti's poetry, prose, and original translations.The collection, which includes important writings unavailable in any edition of Rossetti ever printed, is accompanied by McGann's learned and critically incisive commentaries and notes. ... Read more

Book Description
A cofounder of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) has become well known to many through the widespread reproduction of his work on posters, cards, and prints.

This sumptuous survey of his colorful, romantic art includes major works from all periods of his life in every media including watercolors from the 1850s; paintings of the female figure from 1859 on; representations of artists and their models; studies of Elizabeth Siddall, his wife; late paintings on themes from Dante and the Arthurian legends; the monumental decorative projects at Llandaff Cathedral and at the Oxford Union; and his contributions to the decorative arts (book bindings and illustrations, stained glass, furniture, and picture frames).

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Van Gogh Museum, the book complements recent scholarship and will stimulate further research on Rossetti. The book and exhibition mark a landmark in Rossetti studies, providing an unprecedented opportunity to view the entire range of his achievement.The contributors include Edwin Becker, exhibition curator at the Van Gogh Museum; Liz Prettejohn, Professor of Art History at Plymouth University; and Julian Treuherz of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. 330 illustrations, 130 in color. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Terrible
A great poet's work is massacred here by an editor who pulls apart many of his great works such as the House of Life with arbtirary andmisleading editing. The editor of this really has done a poor job in selecting DG rossetti's fine work or presenting it properly.Its like reading selections from Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet what does it mean?

Many of Rossetti's best
Dante Gabriel Rossetti is perhaps the most famous of the pre-Raphaelite artists, a poet and painter of unusual skill. "Selected Poems" brings together quite a few of his best poems, including some of his more famous poems, but also more obscure ones.

It includes his best known ones such as "The Blessed Damozel" ("Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,/No wrought flowers did adorn,/But a white rose of Mary's gift,/For service meetly worn"), but also lesser-known ones like the charming "Woodspurge," the haunting balladic "Sister Helen," and the lush, sensuous "Card-Dealer" ("Into the silence languidly/As a tune into a tune,/Those eyes unravel the coil'd night/And know the stars at noon.")

If one thing shines through in this collection, it is Rossetti's love of beauty and his rich use of language. The pre-Raphaelite movement was created to advance the styles of Renaissance Italy, and Rossetti was among the most successful. His writing style is on best display here, in all its forms.

Clive Wilmer makes several good choices for the poems involved, showcasing all of the styles that Rossetti did best. Some are like songs, some are sonnets, and some simply straightforward rhyming poems. So the focus is on pure poetry that has aged the best, not on the style of the Victorian era.

Rossetti's style is ornate and a bit old-sounding ("Thou seest the card that falls; -- she knows/The card that followeth"), and is overwhelmed with references to nature -- plants, wind, hills, diamonds and "smooth polish'd silent things." And, of course, beautiful women with shadowy eyes and golden hair.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poetry is well-chosen in Clive Wilmer's collection, and a good introduction to his writings. Lush, rich and lastingly beautiful. ... Read more

Book Description
The New Life is the masterpiece of Dante's youth, an account of his love for Beatrice, the girl who was to become his lifelong muse, and of her tragic early death. An allegory of the soul's crisis and growth, combining prose and poetry, narrative and meditation, dreams and songs and prayers, this work of crystalline beauty and fascinating complexity has long taken its place as one of the supreme revelations in the literature of love.

The New Life is published here in the beautiful translation by the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an inspired poetic re-creation comparable to Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a classic in its own right. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A mythic love
The 'Vita Nuova' is more than anything else a prelude to 'The Divine Comedy'. The Beatrice Dante falls in love with and longs for is on the one hand a figure unattainable, the love- goddess of courtly love. On the other hand she is to become the very essence of the spiritual and to guide Dante later through the Paradiso of the Comedy. The real figure and her life who he falls in love with truly is transformed in myth and mind to a kind of image and essence of Divine Beauty.
As with Petrarch and his Laura the love Dante writes of ' La Vita Nuova' does not somehow strike me and move me in the deepest way, and seems somehow too literary and artificial. Lines of love of Rilke and Kafka sound more authentic to me, but perhaps this is because I am apoor reader and no medievalist.
In any case this is a small classic which is prelude to a far greater one. And the real Beatrice is a small figure beside the mythic one Dante will transform into a literary immortal.

What has never been written of any other woman
Genuine romance and passion is missing from most books, either fiction or nonfiction, and I don't think I've ever come across both in such quantity as there is in "La Vita Nuova" (translation: The New Life), the unsung masterpiece of poet Dante Alighieri (who wrote the classic Divina Comedia).

It is a series of poems centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years. Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

I have never in my life read a book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. It's only a little over a hundred pages long, but it's a truly unique love story. Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her) And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. (And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality)

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or true passion. Not the sort of stuff in pulp romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul, in a unique and unusual love story. Every true romantic should read this book. ... Read more

Book Description
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (1828-1882), who at an early stage of his professional career modified his name into Dante Gabriel Rosetti, was born in London.He was a cofounder of the pre-Raphaelites, a group of English painters and poets who hoped to bring to their art the richness and purity of the Medieval period.Romantic love was Rossetti's main theme in both poetry and painting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great for lovers of Dante Gabriel Rossetti or any Pre-Raph lover
What a wonderful book - Fabulously set out with a full page print on one page and on the opposite page a description of the piece.The preface has loads of information on Rossetti - his art, life and lovers.The only thing that I would like is even more information on each piece of work although what is in the book is definitely better then most. I LOVE IT.

Absolutely beautiful...
I bought this book for my husband who loves the work of Rossetti -- I found this book after scouring five different bookstores for collections and being disappointed with every other one I found.

This book hasfull-page prints of almost every painting he has ever done with detailedbackground information on the opposite page.The preface is facsinating --it details his life as well as the evolution of his style.It is thoroughand well-written; although it can't replace a complete biography onRossetti, it comes close.It includes some of the sketches he had done aspreliminary work as well.

The other books we found either reprinted hispaintings as small pictures in the text (which of course limits yourenjoyment and examination of them) or they only had a few of his picturesor the text was hopelessly stuffy and academic.

My husband loved thebook... and so will you! ... Read more

Book Description
The Collected Writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti allow the reader to enter the world of pre-Raphaelite poetry, to study the interaction between verbal and visual arts and to assess Rossetti's place in the canon of Victorian literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A genius of a poet, a genius of an editor
Next to the glory of his paintings, it's easy to forget that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a talented poet as well.It's easy to overlook his written work, even such classics as "Jenny" and "The Blessed Damozel", and the sonnets.

In this lovely anthology, Jan Marsh -- the foremost authority on the Pre-Raphaelite circle -- has collected and arranged Rossetti's writings.Buy this book, and sample the elegance of Victorian literature, and the genius of Rossetti. ... Read more

Book Description
Volume Two of Two. Other volumes in this set are ISBN(s):1417970251. ... Read more

Book Description
Described by W.S. Blunt as 'the greatest of the all the great Victorian poems', this sequence of 103 sonnets was composed between 1847 and 1881, and finally published complete in Ballads and Sonnets just six months before Rossetti's death. These passionate celebrations of the ecstasy of love threatened by change and Fate inspired the Aesthetes and Decadents of the eighties and nineties, leading to Walter Pater's Mona Lisa and Oscar Wilde's Salome.BR > This new edition of Rossetti's poetic masterpiece is presented here with Introduction, Notes and definitive texts and date. All variants are given for each poem (some sonnets exist in as many as eight versions), and each sonnet is given a documented date of composition and first publication. The illustrations include some rarely-seen images, notably a self-portrait by Elizabeth Siddal, the poet's wife, in whose coffin he placed his original poems, only to exhume them eight years later. ROGER C. LEWIS is Emeritus Professor of English, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
With its luxurious design and captivating text, this book bringsto life a charming, extravagantly talented artist.

One of Victorian England's most charismatic characters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) painted and wrote with equal passion. He was similarly passionate in his personal life: his ethereal artist-wife, his earthy blond mistress, and the ravishing Jane Morris are all immortalized in his voluptuous images. The melodrama of Rossetti's lifedarkened by rumors of suicide, adultery, and addictionhas often overshadowed his striking accomplishments as a painter.

This evocative volume vividly illuminates Rossetti's career, from his early achievements as a founder of the tremendously influential Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, through his involvement with William Morris's revolutionary design firm, to the grandly unorthodox images of his final years. Rossetti's prodigious art encompassed the meticulously detailed canvases of his early years, the jewellike brilliance of his medieval tableaux, and the sensuously alluring women of his late paintings.

The astute text provides, at long last, a clear and candid account of the artist that carefully untangles fact from myth. Reminiscences from the artist's great-grandniece Helen Guglielmini provide an engaging glimpse of life with the Rossettis. Beautifully designed with luscious reproductions, telling details, and graceful ornamentation, this is the first lavishly illustrated monograph devoted to Rossetti.

265 illustrations, 140 in full color ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautiful and Comprehensive
This is a 200+ page oversize (11 x 13) book with dozens of full length color illustrations covering Rossetti's long career. Faxon organizes his works chronologically and provides lots of text covering the period, Rossetti's style, and the meaning inherent in many of his works. There are ample sketches and closeups. For a Rossetti fan, this book is a real treat. ... Read more