Wood, Esther; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel [Ill.]: Dante Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite movement (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1894)

PREFACE.

THE following pages do not afford any
material additions to what is already known
of Dante Rossetti, or of the history and
purpose of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The
authoritative biography of Rossetti has yet to be
written; and while availing myself fully of such
new details as may cast fresh side-lights upon the
dominant personalities of the Pre-Raphaelite move-
ment, my aim has rather been to present the main
features of that movement in their relation to the
larger intellectual tendencies of the age, and to the
moral principles which have determined the growth
of taste and feeling in the nineteenth century. To
this end I have avoided as far as possible the
proper domain of the art critic, and endeavoured
to deal with the Pre-Raphaelite movement more as
an ethical than an aesthetic revolution.
“It was always known to be Rossetti’s wish,”
says Mr. Hall Caine in his interesting and
graphic “ Recollections of Rossetti,” “ that if at any
moment after his death it should appear that the
story of his life required to be written, the one