Added to your basket:
A collection of thirty items, mostly articles from periodicals including Revue des deux mondes, The Nineteenth Century, and The Contemporary Review, several annotated by WMR.

Checkout now

A characteristic tract volume assembled by William Michael Rossetti, with articles or offprints of interest to him or relating to the Rossettis and their circle, including pieces given to him by Shelley’s friend Edward Trelawny, and his sister’s suitor C. B. Cayley.

The contents include:

HANNAY, David. ‘The Paintings of Mr. Rossetti’, from The National Review, March 1883. Fredeman 21.14. In this aggressive review of the posthumous Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhibition of 1883, Hannay attacks his ‘monotony’ and ‘bad drawing’, but more particularly the coterie of followers who are trumpeting his importance. William Michael Rossetti has added a long note at the head: ‘this is a hostile article, & looks to me as if inspired by some personal animosity – I don’t know why – Gabriel was an early intimate of the writer’s father [the novelist James Hannay], & had a particular esteem for his mother, & was about the most liberal among the subscribers for the benefit of the writer & his brothers & sisters after the father’s death – W.M.R.’

SCHURÉ, Édouard. ‘Le poète panthéiste de l’Angleterre’, parts I and II, from Revue des deux mondes 1877. An article on Shelley, annotated at the head ‘Trelawny gave me this. W.M.R.’ Shelley’s intimate Edward John Trelawny (1792–1881), author of Recollections of the last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858), became a friend of William Michael Rossetti, who edited and reissued his memoir Adventures of a younger Son as Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author (1878).

LEIFCHILD, Franklin. ‘Hamlet: a New Reading’, from The Contemporary Review 1883. Annotated at the head ‘Given to me by C. B. Cayley the translator of Dante W.M.R.’ William Michael Rossetti had been introduced to Leifchild by Cayley (see Some Reminiscences), who in addition to being a Dante scholar had at one time been Christina Rossetti’s suitor.

GUILLAUMET, Charles de. ‘Rossetti’, from Tablettes biographiques (Paris 1882). Annotated ‘founded to a large extent upon information given by WMR – paragraph marked X is mainly mine’. The said paragraph praises Dante Gabriel’s work for ‘un sentiment de mysticisme tantôt sombre e navrante, qui porte l’esprit à une mélancolie qui tient à la fois de l’inquiétude et de la suavité’.

Other reviews of the Rossettis include Theodore Watts, ‘The Truth about Rossetti’ (March, 1883); Emilie Barrington, ‘The Painted Poetry of Watts and Rossetti’ (June, 1883); Harry Quilter, ‘The Art of Rossetti’; and Mary F. Robinson, ‘Zur Geschichte der zeitgenössischen Poesie Englands … III. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’ (1879) – the first notice of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Germany.