Dante Rossetti Timeline

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This timeline will provide a general overview of the famous author and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The timeline will also include monumental moments for the Pre Raphaelite movement of which Rossetti was a core founder. 

Timeline

Chronological table

Displaying 1 - 10 of 10
Date Event Created by Associated Places
12 May 1828

Birth of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Photo of DGR
Albumen print of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (7 October 1863)

On 12 May 1828, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born as Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti. His parents were Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti, an Italian émigré scholar, and Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (the sister of John William Polidori). Rossetti would go on to form the influential literary and artistic group, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898.

Dino Franco Felluga
1848

Pre-Raphaelites Movement

Millais, John Everett. File:Millais - Ophelia.jpg. 1851, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Millais_-_Ophelia.jpg.
File:Millais - Ophelia.jpg

The Pre-Raphaelites brotherhood began in 1848 with a group of Victorian artists and poets who wanted to revolutionize British art. It was started by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Homehand, and John Everett Millais. Their objective was to make art more real by imitating the natural world, rather than it being conventional. When creating art, the pre-Raphaelites would use bright colors and make the art very detailed in nature. For them, art and literature go hand in hand. This brotherhood was very influential in Christina Rossetti’s life due to her brothers being members. She even participated in a few of their paintings and works. One of the biggest ways we see the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in “Goblin Market” is the attention to detail. The descriptions of the fruit and animals mentioned are very bright and intricate. This influence has helped the readers to become immersed in the world of the Goblin market. This picture I have selected is Ophelia done by John Everett Millais in 1851 to 1852. This work shows the Pre-Raphaelites attention to nature and detail.

MLA Works Cited

Roe, Dinah. “Pre-Raphaelites.” British Library, 15 May 2014, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-pre-raphaelites.

Sydney Shellhouse
Dec 1849

Siddal "discovered" by Walter Deverell

Elizabeth Siddal Self-Portrait (c. 1853-54)
Elizabeth Siddal Self-Portrait (c. 1853-54)

In December 1849, Elizabeth ("Lizzie") Siddal was "discovered" by Walter Deverell, a Pre-Raphaelite painter, while she was working as a milliner in Cranbourne Alley, She went on to become a model for other Pre-Raphaelite artists and eventually married Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  London. Image: Elizabeth Siddal self-portrait. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art.

Jerome McGann
25 May 1857 to 25 Jun 1857

Pre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit

photo of DG RossettiPre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit, Russell Square, London, from 25 May to 25 June 1857. This was the first exhibition devoted solely to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Related Articles

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

David Rettenmaier
11 Feb 1862

Death of Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal self-portrait
Elizabeth Siddal Self-Portrait (c. 1853-54)

Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (formerly Elizabeth Siddal) died of a laudanum overdose at 7:20 a.m. on 11 February 1862 at 14 Chatham Place. Image: Elizabeth Siddal self-portrait.  This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art.

Dino Franco Felluga
10 Oct 1869

Exhumation of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's manuscripts

manuscript of "Praise and Prayer"
Manuscript of "Praise and Prayer" exhumed from Elizabeth Siddal's grave

On 10 October 1869, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had the manuscripts that he had previously buried with Elizabeth Siddal exhumed. Image: "Praise and Prayer" manuscript, one of three surviving leaves from the manuscripts Rossetti buried with his wife on 17 February 1862 in Highgate Cemetary. The original is in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (MS Eng 769).

Jerome McGann
Apr 1870

Rossetti, Poems

photo of DG RossettiIn April 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published his first volume of original poetry, marking the start of several decades of renewed lyric experimentation by younger poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, George Meredith, and Gerard Manly Hopkins. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print, 7 October 1863. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870″

David Rettenmaier
16 Sep 1881

Publication of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets

Binding of Ballads and Sonnets (1881)
Binding of Ballads and Sonnets (1881)

On 16 September 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published Ballads and Sonnets (London: Ellis and White, 1881) along with a new edition of his Poems. Originally Rossetti intended to publish only one book of his works in 1881, a revised and augmented edition of his 1870 Poems. (On the 1870 volume, see Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870.″) In working over his materials, however, Rossetti soon realized that he had more poems than could be accommodated to a single volume, so he devised the scheme that eventuated in the publication of Ballads and Sonnets and its companion, A New Edition (so identified on the title page) of PoemsBallads and Sonnets included an expanded set of poems with the title, "The House of Life," now prefaced with an "Introductory Sonnet" with the first line, "A Sonnet is a moment's monument." Image: courtesy of The Rossetti Archive.

Jerome McGann
9 Apr 1882

Death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

All Saints' Church, Burchington-on-Sea, Kent, England

Dante Gabriel Rossetti died on 9 April 1882 (Easter Sunday) at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, where he was also buried at All Saints' Church. Image: Birchington All Saints Church from the southwest (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license).

Dino Franco Felluga
circa. Winter 1882

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study published

DGR’s illuminated sonnet was first published as the frontispiece to William Sharp’s biography of the poet-painter, brought out by Macmillan in the year of the poet’s death. In a letter to her brother William dated 26 July 1882, Christina Rossetti reported that their mother, Frances, had loaned “her cherished Main’s Sonnet book, giving him leave to have the ‘Sonnet’ drawing engraved for his book” (Letters of Christina Rossetti vol 3, p. 52).

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra