Rossetti Morris: Correspondence C

by John Bryson (Editor), Janet Camp Troxell (Editor), Jane Morris

Text + notes for 114 letters from Rossetti to Jane Morris, dated 1868-1881, 37 from her to him, dated 1878-1881 or undated, and 4 other letters. This is not really a history of a correspondence, since the record is one-sided until 1878, and too incomplete or ambiguously dated thereafter, but some light may be thrown on the relationship between D.G.R. and J.M. by what is said or not said, and there are interesting comments on contemporaries. With black-and-white illustrations, mostly of Rossetti paintings or drawings using Jane Morris as a model or subject, or photographs. Index. Dust jacket moderately soiled. xxii, 219 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. large 8vo..

242 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1976

Reviews

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Here printed in full for the first time, are 114 letters from Rossetti to Jane Morris…They provide a poignant record of an intimate friendship and tell us much about Rossetti’s painting and writing during the latter part of his career…They were both great readers and they exchanged opinions on what they had been reading.’

This quote from the blurb on the inner book jacket sets out plainly what one will encounter throughout the book. As the Preface indicates, the letters from Rossetti to Janey were given to the British Museum by the executor of May Morris after her death in 1939. They were then placed on reserve for a period of fifty years dating from her mother’s death in 1914, becoming available for the first time in 1964 – which means they have been accessible for fifty three years now. This publication first appeared in 1976, eight years before the seminal Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibition.

Rossetti’s letters begin in March 1868 and end in October in 1881, six months before his death. Jane’s responses, of which there are not many in the book, only cover three years from 1878 to 1881. There is a Rossetti break between May 1868 and July 1869, and another if seven years between 1870 and 1877. There are no letters during Rossetti’s breakdown in the summer of 1872 (although there is a letter from Jane to William Michael Rossetti about her concern, and there is documentation pertaining to this elsewhere, e.g. in William’s diary). As Troxell’s preface says ‘There is little to explain why some letters have survived and others not’.

Their polite and restrained intimacy never does really reveal the detail we long for, and so the myth of their ‘love’ remains. The book provides much besides this, from painting information, social and historical detail to just an intimate and long-lived affection between two people who both struggled with various things but maintained contact throughout the bumps of their lives.

A full account of the book can be found here:

https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpr...

[Naomi Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually find collections of letters endlessly fascinating, the minutia of daily life building over decades to give you a more complex view of the authors. This collection disappointed quite a bit. Admittedly I was reading more from the point of someone researching William Morris and trying to understand more about Jane Morris, but I found the letters extremely…flat. They were censored and rewritten, as many of the letters of that time were, so we can’t know what Dante Gabriel and Jane were really talking about. And all that’s left is the weather, the paintings, and complaining about health. To someone researching or interested in Rossetti this might be a useful look into his work but as a reflection of two people it’s too truncated to learn much.