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.

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by Dino Franco Felluga

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, www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victor….

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by Sydney Shellhouse

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.

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by Jerome McGann

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.

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by Dino Franco Felluga

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).

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by Jerome McGann

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 Poems.  Ballads 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.

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by Jerome McGann

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).

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by Dino Franco Felluga

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).

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by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra