Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Poet as Craftsman (Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet-painter, was an untiring craftsman who repeatedly edited his poems - partly due to the influence of advice from family and friends. He refrained from publishing any volume of his own work until he was past forty although he had been writing poetry since his teenage years and had published a few poems, which he also subsequently revised, in periodicals and annuals. This book records the extensive paper-trail of personal correspondence, documented comments, manuscripts, proof sheets, and various printed editions offering the reader the opportunity to see Rossetti at work and to trace the gradual maturation of his thinking from draft to revision to print.