| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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In 1895 he published Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family Letters with a Memoir. In the preface he cautioned the reader:
Marsh observes that William’s writing about Rossetti was “defined by competing impulses of accuracy and reticence” and that he restricted his Memoir to family affairs, “enabling the more disreputable aspects of Gabriel’s life to be obscured” (Legend 43). The effort to protect Rossetti’s reputation spearheaded by William Michael reached its zenith in 1941 with the publication of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, His Friends and Enemies by his niece, Helen Rossetti Angeli. Although recent scholars like Marsh and Doughty, making use of modern critical methods and other scattered primary sources, have taken issue with Angeli on some points and have sought to create a more nuanced portrait, her work remains important because she was sufficiently close to her uncle’s life itself to preserve facts known almost exclusively to the family. From the information provided by the Rossettis and the comprehensive works of Doughty and Marsh, as well as some additional sources, it is possible to synthesize the basic biographical sketch with which one must become familiar before assessing the interpretations biographers have given to it.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born in London on May 12, 1828, the son of Gabriele Pasquale Rossetti, an Italian from Vasto in the Abruzzi region, and his English wife, Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, who was also of Italian ancestry. There were four children in the family: Maria Francesca (1827–1876), Gabriel Charles Dante (1828–1882), William Michael (1829–1919), and Christina Georgina (1830–1894) (Angeli xi). Dante Gabriel studied first at the King’s College School, London, but left at thirteen years of age to study art, for which he showed an early aptitude. His family always seemed to understand implicitly that he