The letters that passed between a young unknown provincial journalist and a famous Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet over a period of two years give a fascinating sidelight on 1880s literary life. They illuminate the last years of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the start of a career that was to make Hall Caine the most popular and best-selling romantic novelist of his time. The value and interest of this book lie in the fact that both sides of a correspondence are printed here together for the first time. It should appeal both to specialists and the general reader. The book contains sixteen plates.
In tracing those deliberate and accidental Romantic echoes that reverberate through the Victorian age into the beginning of the twentieth century, this collection acknowledges that the Victorians decided for themselves how to define what is 'Romantic'. The essays explore the extent to which Victorianism can be distinguished from its Romantic precursors, or whether it is possible to conceive of Romanticism without the influence of these Victorian definitions. Romantic Echoes in the Victorian Era reassesses Romantic literature's immediate cultural and literary legacy in the late nineteenth century, showing how the Victorian writings of Matthew Arnold, Wilkie Collins, the Brontës, the Brownings, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, and the Rossettis were instrumental in shaping Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon. Many of these Victorian writers found in the biographical, literary, and historical models of Chatterton, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth touchstones for reappraising their own creative potential and artistic identity. Whether the Victorians affirmed or revolted against the Romanticism of their early years, their attitudes towards Romantic values enriched and intensified the personal, creative, and social dilemmas described in their art. Taken together, the essays in this collection reflect on current critical dialogues about literary periodisation and contribute to our understanding of how these contemporary debates stem from Romanticism's inception in the Victorian age.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.
Represents the collection of extant Rossetti correspondence, a primary witness to the range of ideas and opinions that shaped Gabriel Rossetti's art and poetry. This work features known surviving letters, a total of almost 5,800 to over 330 recipients, and includes 2,000 letters by Rossetti and selected letters to him.
