The best of these letters, flowing rapidly from his pen, radiate charisma and enthusiasm, warmth and care for his friends, and a total engagement with art and literature. JULIAN TREUHERZ, BURLINGTON MAGAZINE [on I. and II.] These years were the most tumultuous of Rossetti's life. His breakdown and attempted suicide inevitably makes the letters of this period exceptionally poignant, but the volume contains many letters relating to his life and work. Throughout most of 1871 he was writing and painting; he became, with William Morris, a co-tenant of Kelmscott Manor, bringing him close to Jane Morris and also to the two Morris daughters. In October the name of Robert Buchanan enters the letters as the likely author of 'The Fleshly School of Poetry', and an alarming unease can be sensed. Following his attempted suicide and eventual return to Kelmscott, the letters increase in number - affectionate, considerate and businesslike by turns, with a certain morbidity at times; many letters are concerned with helping Ford Madox Brown's application for the Slade Professorship at Cambridge. The wider world of Victorian London is present: Turgenev comes to dinner, Browning sends his new volumes, Swinburne arrives drunk, and the American poet and adventurer Joaquin Miller makes himself known to the Rossetti circle. Nine appendices include five devoted to Poems and one to the Fleshly School controversy.
Reviews
I should like to draw initial attention to the publication by D.S. Brewer of these three splendid volumes [4,5 and 6] .... Scholarship of this quality does not come cheap, but deserves to be supported by all who value it. [...] Rossetti's letters are those of a man fully engaged with whatever he undertook, and it is a great pleasure to salute these volumes from D.S. Brewer. THE JOURNAL OF WILLIAM MORRIS STUDIESFredeman's magnificently edited, annotated, appendixed and indexed edition, which is also beautifully produced, is testimony to an immensely impressive editorial labour of love. [...]
Fredeman has reproduced, sourced and annotated every known letter by Rossetti, and provided appendices in which one seems to be reading the story of a whole generation.[...]
This is a magnificent work of scholarship, long overdue and to be warmly welcomed. In it, the story of these turbulent years in Rossetti's life is told again, not by a biographer recharging a well-known legend, but by an editor scrupulously sifting and reassessing small pieces of evidence. TLS
