Following on from the success of 'Bloomsbury At Home', Pamela Todd turns her attention to the fiery group of young artists, designers and thinkers, led by the charismatic figure of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which, in 1848, came together as the semi-secret Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She explores their personalities and work through the places and haunts they made their own, presenting an intimate view of an important section of the avant garde artistic community and placing it firmly in its Victorian context.
This is a book about personality and place. Biographies of each of the extensive cast of characters open the book, followed by a chronology of the significant events affecting the group over more than 60 years. In the succeeding chapters Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Thomas Woolner are joined by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and their intimate circle. Place by place, we are led through the story of subtly shifting allegiance, of love and deaths, adultery and illness, as the angry young men became successful, and, in some cases even respectable.
The lively narrative, packed with quotations from their own work, is lavishly illustrated with full colour reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and portraits, photographs of interiors, furnishings and textile designs, and black and white contemporary photographs of the artists, their homes and their studios, as well as line drawings, sketches and cartoons from Punch and material from the 'Illustrated London News'.
