Dante Gabriel Rossetti

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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.