Præraphaelite diaries and letters

About this book

"Præraphaelite diaries and letters" by Brown, Rossetti, and Rossetti is a collection of diaries and correspondence written in the late 19th century. It gathers primary documents—letters, journals, and working notes—from leading figures of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, illuminating their methods, friendships, travels, and the inner mechanics of the movement. Editorial headnotes provide context while preserving the immediacy of the original voices.

The opening of the collection sets out the editor’s aim and the book’s three parts: early correspondence (mostly from a young poet-painter), letters and a diary by a senior artist, and a Brotherhood journal. It then counters the cliché of the “pallid aesthete” by sketching a brisk, humorous, practical character and listing key associates. Early letters range from childhood notes about family gifts, fairs, and Shakespeare, to a sharp-eyed comparison of an Italian lyric with Sir Henry Wotton, a teenage poem submission, and a vivid travel letter from Flanders praising Memling and Van Eyck amid playful asides. Brief, lively notes chart studio scrapes, moves, large pictures taking shape, PRB gatherings, would-be patrons, and the emergence—and ill health—of a gifted pupil. A father’s tender, sober counsel punctuates the sequence. The next section shifts to a painter’s letters home about exhibitions, fresco and cartoon work, and studio life, before his diary begins with the conception of a grand Chaucer canvas and day-by-day entries on grief, discipline, fabrics and lay-figures, museum research, and art-society wrangles—an unvarnished record of work at its start.