This unusual dual biography is
set in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Rome, Pau, Biarritz, and
San Remo. It contains painters and poets, heroes and stunners,
childbirth, deathbeds, the Victorian postal service, a fragment
of Shelley's skull, Dante's Inferno, Italy, zoos, gout, office
life, séances and the 'Living Magnet', Walt Whitman, Holman Hunt's
chest, a Dancing Faun, continental railways, Whistler's litigiousness,
Japanese swords, owls, earthquakes, the 'Balliol bugger', Garibaldi,
Leopardi, wombats and the first Venice Biennale.
The marriage of William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) and Lucy Madox Brown
(1843-1894) united two of the most resonant Pre-Raphaelite family names.
Their passionate and ultimately tragic relationship - described here for
the first time - provides a fresh perspective on nineteenth-century marriage
and on the private lives of eminent Victorians.
Sibling of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, William was one
of the original Pre-Raphaelite 'Brothers', a Bohemian, radical
author, poet, critic, artist, connoisseur, biographer, historian,
and taxman. Lucy, the intense, intellectual daughter of Ford Madox
Brown, was an ambitious artist and biographer of Mary Shelley,
despite struggling with tuberculosis for nearly a decade. Drawing
on hundreds of previously unpublished sources and a wealth of
new visual material (including art by William, Lucy and others
of their circle, as well as striking contemporary photographs),
the book follows William and Lucy through their separate professional
careers, marriage, continental travels and Lucy's illness and
death. At the crossover between art history, literary criticism,
social history and biography, this book rewrites Pre-Raphaelite
history and brings to life two fascinating people who were both
of their time and ahead of it. |
