ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel.

£3,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Poems. First trade edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the poet on the half-title: "To Sir Noel Paton, with friendly regards, D. G. Rossetti, April 1870."A Scottish artist, Sir Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901) shared many of the same aesthetic ideals as Rossetti and his circle. While studying at the Royal Academy in 1843, he was invited by John Everett Millais to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; though he initially declined, his painting would be greatly influenced by their style, particularly in its historical accuracy and "minutely observed natural detail" (ODNB). He attended John Ruskin's 1853 Edinburgh lectures and later made several attempts to have Rossetti's paintings exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy. He particularly praised Rossetti's painting Dante's Dream as "among the half-dozen supreme pictures of the world".Poems was Rossetti's first commercially published collection of original poems, preceded by two private printings in 1869 and 1870. The events leading up to publication are notorious: when the poet's wife Elizabeth Siddal died in February 1862, Rossetti placed the original manuscripts of his poems in her coffin, burying them with her in Highgate Cemetery. When he began composing new poems in 1869, he secretly exhumed the manuscripts of his earlier poems from her grave and published them the following year. The collection opens with "The Blessed Damozel", perhaps his most famous poem, and also includes "Dante at Verona", "A Last Confession", "My Si

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.