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William Michael Rossetti

English author and critic (–)

William Michael Rossetti (25 September &#; 5 February ) was an English writer and critic.

William michael rossetti biography of abraham lincoln He was born in London on 25 September , the son of the immigrant Italian poet and scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and his wife Frances Lavinia Polidori. William was the third of the four Rossetti children, a year younger than his more famous older brother Dante Gabriel. He thus became the main financial support for the entire Rossetti family. Despite this, he continued his literary pursuits and was the first of the Rossetti children to have a poem published when his "In the Hill-Shadow" appeared in The Athenaeum in October He kept the PRB Journal from to and was editor of their literary magazine The Germ that published four issues in

Early life

Born in London, Rossetti was a son of exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances Rossetti née Polidori; he was the brother of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Career

He was one of the seven founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in , and became the movement's unofficial organizer and bibliographer.

He edited the Brotherhood's literary magazine The Germ which published four issues in Rossetti wrote the poetry reviews for this magazine.

It was William Michael Rossetti who recorded the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at their founding meeting in September

  1. To have genuine ideas to express;
  2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
  3. To sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
  4. And most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.[1]

Although Rossetti worked full-time as a civil servant, he maintained a prolific output of criticism and biography across a range of interests from Algernon Swinburne to James McNeill Whistler.

He edited the diaries of his maternal uncle John William Polidori (author of The Vampyre and physician to Lord Byron), a comprehensive biography of D. G. Rossetti, and edited the collected works of D. G. Rossetti and Christina Rossetti.

Rossetti edited the first British edition of the poetry of Walt Whitman, which was published in ; however, this edition was bowdlerized.[2]Anne Gilchrist, who became one of the first to write about Whitman, first read his poetry from Rossetti's edition, and Rossetti helped initiate their correspondence.[3]

William Michael Rossetti was a major contributor to the edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; his contributions on artistic subjects were criticised by many reviewers at the time and since, as showing little evidence of having absorbed the mounting body of work by academic art historians, mostly writing in German.

Below is a quotation from his article on Fra Angelico demonstrating his literary and art-historical style:

The "pietistic" quality of Fra Angelico's work is in fact its predominant characteristic. The faces of his figures have an air of rapt suavity, devotional fervency and beaming esoteric consciousness, which is intensely attractive to some minds the faces becoming sleek and prim, with a smirk of sexless religiosity which hardly eludes the artificial or even the hypocritical; because of this, there are some who are not moved by his work.

Even so, Fra Angelico is a notable artist within his sphere.[4]

Personal life

In he married Lucy Madox Brown, daughter of the painter Ford Madox Brown.

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  • William michael rossetti biography of abraham lincoln book
  • Brief biography of abraham lincoln
  • They honeymooned in France and Italy. Their first child, Olivia Frances Madox, was born in September , and her birth was celebrated in an ode of Swinburne's. A son, Gabriel Arthur, was born in February , followed by another daughter, Helen Maria, in November , and twins, Mary Elizabeth and Michael Ford, in April Rossetti and his wife did not have the children baptized, nor were they raised in a Christian household.

    The children were schooled at home by their mother and governesses.

    William michael rossetti biography of abraham lincoln author

    Your letter of 22 Novr. Conway 3. You no doubt will by this time have received the one I addressed to you 2 or 3 weeks ago; but perhaps it may occur to me to repeat here some things said in that letter. I think the most convenient course may be for me first to state the facts about my Selection. Some while back—I suppose loc.

    Their son Michael died in infancy. In , Olivia married an Italian anarchist refugee, Antonio Agresti. They later moved to Italy, where Olivia became a translator and writer. After she was widowed in , she became an associate of Ezra Pound, and the two corresponded frequently. Gabriel Arthur, known as Arthur to the family, became a scientist, married Dora Lewis, and had several children.

    Helen became a painter of miniatures, and in married Gastone Angeli. He was in fragile health and died only a few months later.

    Biography of john f. kennedy: William Michael Rossetti (25 September – 5 February ) was an English writer and critic. Born in London, Rossetti was a son of exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances Rossetti née Polidori; he was the brother of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti.

    Helen gave birth to his posthumous daughter, Imogen Lucy, in In , Helen and Olivia also published A Girl Among the Anarchists under the pseudonym 'Isabel Meredith'; the novel is a fictional recounting of their experiences in the anarchist movement.

    William Michael Rossetti died on 5 February aged 89 and is buried in the Rossetti family grave on the west side of Highgate Cemetery.

    In the grave he joined his father, mother, Elizabeth Siddal (wife of his brother Dante) and his sister Christina. The ashes of his son Gabriel Arthur Maddox were interred in the grave in and three other members of the Rossetti family have also been buried there subsequently.

    Partial bibliography

    • Rossetti, W.

      M. (). The Germ: thoughts towards nature in poetry, literature, and art.

      Biography of abraham lincoln books Of the dozen Lincoln biographies I read, two were Pulitzer Prize winners, one is the second best-read presidential biography of all time, and six held the distinction of being the definitive Lincoln biography at one time or another. Together, they contained nearly 9, pages — almost twice as many as the president with the second-tallest stack of biographies in my collection Thomas Jefferson with about 5, pages. This 1, page jewel is actually the condensed version of the much longer original manuscript that is only available online free! Although daunting for a new Lincoln admirer and probably more detailed than most readers will desire, this biography is extremely descriptive and consistently insightful. Because of its extensive breadth and depth of coverage this may not be the perfect introduction to Lincoln for some readers.

      London: Aylott & Jones.

    • Rossetti, W. M. (). Essays on early Italian and German books of Courtesy. London: Trübner.
    • Rossetti, W. M. (). Walt Whitman. London: s.n.
    • Rossetti, W. M. ().

      William michael rossetti biography of abraham lincoln for kids Rossetti received a copy of Leaves of Grass soon after its publication, as a gift from William Bell Scott, who had been introduced to it by Thomas Dixon of Sunderland. Rossetti responded enthusiastically and discussed it with many other British writers, among them Swinburne. O'Connor, and Whitman himself. It was reprinted in several publications in the United States. At the suggestion of Moncure D.

      Lives of famous poets from Chaucer to Longfellow: with lists of minor poets whose biographies are not included. [S.l.]: Ward.

    • Rossetti, W. M. (). American poetry: a representative collection of the best verse by American writers. London: Ward, Lock.
    • Rossetti, W. M. (). Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Slark.
    • Rossetti, W.

      M. ().

    • American Civil War - Wikisource, the free online library
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    • William Michael Rossetti to Walt Whitman, 8 December 1867
    • William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) | A Century of Sonnets ...
    • William Michael Rossetti | Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante ...
    • Dante Gabriel Rossetti as designer and writer. London: Cassell & Company, limited.

    See also

    References

    1. ^Rossetti, William Michael. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir. (London: Ellis, ), p. ()
    2. ^Belasco, Susan; Folsom, Ed; Price, Kenneth M.

      (), Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN&#;

    3. ^Robertson, Michael (), Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples, Princeton University Press, p.&#;62, ISBN&#;
    4. ^Rossetti, William Michael. "Angelico, Fra".

      Encyclopædia Britannica.

    Further reading

    • Dinah Roe: The Rossettis in Wonderland. A Victorian Family History. Haus Publishing, London , ISBN&#;
    • Angela Thirlwell. William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis. Yale University Press, New Haven/London , ISBN&#;
    • Julie L'Enfant.

      William Rossetti's Art Criticism: The Search for Truth in Victorian Art. University Press of America; ISBN&#;

    External links