Literature
[ROSSETTI, Christina, Georgina].
The Poetical Work of Christina Georgina Rossetti. With Memoir and Notes &c by William Michael Rossetti.
Macmillan and Co., London, 1914. 5th reprint of first edition. 8vo, INSCRIBED by Rossetti's brother William Michael, "To Miss Annie Barlow/ Wm. M. Rossetti/ April 1917." Frontispiece with portrait of Christina Rossetti, between frontispiece and tissue guard tipped in ALS by Christina Rossetti to her brother (dated in pencil 14 Feb/83). Library stamp and small label on front pastedown, offsetting and spotting to letter and frontispiece. Publisher's green cloth, rubbing to edges and extremities with minimal loss, spine darkened, cloth slightly split at head and tail. A good plus copy.
William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) was the second son and third child (after Maria Francesca and Dante Gabriel); his younger sister Christina Georgina was to follow a year later in 1830. Like his brother he played his part in the "pre-Raphaelite" movement but later concentrated on art criticism and worked as literary editor. Since his brother died in 1882 and Christina in 1894 he undertook a lot of editorial and autobiographical work and published collected editions as well as family memoirs. For Christina he published New Poems in 1896, the Collected Poems with Memoir (of which this copy is a reprint) in 1904 and Family Letters in 1908. "It is not necessary to share either his sense of his brother's importance or his careful detachment from his sister's religion to find his loyalty and candour admirable, and his detachment amusing, in no derisive sense. He suppressed nothing but what the rights of the living demanded, and he was scrupulously just." (DNB)
Price: £ 720
US Dollar Price: $ 1090
Stock Number: 45635