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

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
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

Book Description
Resurrecting Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a major literary figure and visual artist of the second half of the nineteenth century, this book is a conscious reaction to the last sixty years of literary criticism - in which Rossetti's work has been diminished and downplayed.McGann asserts the enormity of Rossetti's accomplishment by pointing out that Rossetti was the central artistic and intellectual figure of his generation, whose influence extended from Swinburne to Wilde to Yeats of Pound. McGann ultimately contends that Rosetti was the major conceptual artist of his generation, whose work prefigured many of the major aesthetic shifts of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Book Description
For critics like John Ruskin and Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1892) was one of the great creative figures of the day, a painter and a poet of major stature.Yeats and the young Pound regarded him as an exemplary figure of solitary dedication to art and beauty.

Rossetti's most original work may have been in preparing the way for the modernists, who in turn dethroned him.He called the sonnet 'a moment's monument', and his best short lyrics are instants of oppressed emotion cut free of time.In this, as in the suggestiveness of his imagery, he anticipates the French Symbolists.He can also be regarded as the founder of modern verse translation, not only for the freshness of his versions but also for his choice of poets---Villon, Cavalcanti and the young Dante.

In this selection, Clive Wilmer has made a personal choice, emphasizing the 'pure poetry' of the lyrics at the expense of the more conventionally Victorian monologues and narratives.He has also included a generous selection from the translations, and provided a biographical and critical introduction. ... Read more

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

Product Description
1855-1862: This nine-volume edition will represent the definitive collection of extant Rossetti correspondence, an outstanding primary witness to the range of ideas and opinions that shaped Rossetti's art and poetry. The largest collection of Rossetti's letters ever to be published, it features all known surviving letters, a total of almost 5,800 to over 330 recipients, and includes 2,000 previously unpublished letters by Rossetti and selected letters to him. In addition to this, about 100 drawings taken from within letter texts are also reproduced. In its entirety the collection will give an invaluable and unparalleled insight into Rossetti's character and art, and will form a rich resource for students and scholars studying all aspects of his life and work. The correspondence has been transcribed from collections in sixty-four manuscript repositories, containing Rossetti's letters to his companions in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt and Stephens; friends such as Boyce and Bell Scott; his early patrons, Ellen Heaton and James Leathart; and his publisher friend, Alexander Macmillan. An additional twenty-two printed sources have also been accessed. Index; extensive annotations. ... Read more

Book Description
Following the death ofElizabeth Siddal in 1862 and his settling in Chelsea, Rossetti entered on a period of his life -- charted in volume 3 -- that was marked by renewed activity as a painter and increased financial prosperity. The years 1868-1870 covered by volume 4 culminate in his return to writing poetry and the publication in June 1870 of his long-anticipated and widely-read Poems. However, despite the satisfaction that he could take from his standing as a painter and from the fact that he was about to establish himself as a poet, 1868-1870 were troubled years for Rossetti. Problems with his eyesight led him to give up painting for long periods, and to fear that, like his father before him, he would end his days blind. He consulted Sir William Bowman and other leading ophthalmologists, who eased his mind sufficiently for him to return to his easel.This was also the time when he declared his love for Jane Morris, the wife of his long-time friend and admirer William Morris. In his long, moving letters to Janey we come face to face with the satisfactions and frustrations of their relationship. The letters to Janey provide a context for understanding the many paintings and drawings from this period for which she was the model, and for gauging the biographical origins of the sonnets, written at this time for the sequence, The House of Life, an early version of which was included in Poems.Probably the most rewarding letters in the volume concern the preparation of Poems. The letters deal at length with Rossetti's decision to have his poems typeset for distribution to friends, the exhumation of Elizabeth Siddal's coffin to recover the manuscript of his poems, his obsessive care over the physical appearance of the volume, especially the binding , and his efforts at "working the oracle," William Bell Scott's description of his methodically lining up sympathetic reviewers.As with all of Rossetti's correspondence, the letters in volume 4 are replete with pointed and sometimes humorous commentary on an array of people and events, ranging from Edward Burne-Jones's affair with "the Greek damzel," Mary Zambaco, and Frederick Sandys's appropriation of subjects from his pictures, to his unease over Swinburne's uncontrollable drunkenness, and his ominous hatred of Robert Buchanan, the author of the "Fleshly School" attack on his poetry in the Contemporary Review of October 1871, which became a major cause of the disastrous events of the years 1871-1872. ... Read more

Product Description
The two years covered in Volume 5, 1871 and 1872, were the most tumultuous of Rossetti's life. His breakdown and attempted suicide in the summer of 1872, a period which Professor Fredeman memorably called "Prelude to the Last Decade," inevitably makes the letters of these months exceptionally poignant, but the volume contains many letters of equal importance for understanding and reassessing Rossetti's life and work. Throughout most of 1871, the success of Poems continued to gratify him, and he was busily engaged in writing new sonnets for The House of Life and a long narrative poem Rose Mary. Commissions from William Graham for The Blessed Damozel and a duplicate of Beata Beatrix allowed him to anticipate continuing financial security. "What delight I have felt in my work lately," he wrote to Alicia Losh in January. In May he became with William Morris a co-tenant of Kelmscott Manor, "a haunt of ancient peace" as he frequently describes it (quoting Tennyson). Living at Kelmscott for long periods meant that he was close to Jane Morris, but often he speaks of the pleasure that he also found in the company of the two Morris daughters. By October, however, the name of Robert Buchanan enters the letters as the likely author of "The Fleshly School of Poetry," and beneath Rossetti's insistence that "the skunk" of his limerick on Buchanan did not deserve to be taken seriously, an alarming unease can be sensed. Comparatively few, and mostly brief, letters survive from the first six months of 1872. Those to his closest friends and to his brother invariably refer to the "Fleshly School," but the tone has darkened. Following his attempted suicide on 8 June and his departure for Scotland and eventual return to Kelmscott, the letters increase in number and can often impress and surprise the reader. The letters to his beloved mother, one dated as early as 21 June, to Fanny Cornforth and to Ford Madox Brown are both deeply affectionate and studiously considerate, while those to his brother, his agent Charles Augustus Howell. ... Read more