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Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Poetry Of (Audiobook)
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Read by Richard Mitchley, Ghizela Rowe & Gideon Wagner (Unabridged: 1hr 7mins)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born on May 12th 1828 in London, England.

As a youth he was "self-possessed, articulate, passionate and charismatic" but also "ardent, poetic and feckless". Like his siblings, including famed poet Christina Georgina Rossetti, he most wished to be a poet but had a keen eye as a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art.

Together with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais they developed and founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It’s mission; to reform English art and return to the detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.

The brotherhood's magazine, The Germ, was first published in 1850 with Rossetti contributing a poem, "The Blessed Damozel", and a story about a fictional Italian artist inspired by a vision of a woman who bids him combine the human and the divine in his art.

Rossetti first met his future wife, Elizabeth Siddal, a model, in 1849 who was later sitting for him and involved in an intense relationship.  By 1852 they withdrew from society; totally absorbed in each other. The lovers nicknamed each other; "Guggums" and "Dove". 

In 1861, Rossetti, together with William Morris, became a founding partner in the decorative arts firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Rossetti contributed designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

Meanwhile his marriage to Lizzie was troubled.  The terrible hurt of Rossetti’s affairs with other women had caused her stress leading to depression and other illnesses. She now began to take, and become addicted to, laudanum. In 1861, Lizzie became pregnant but the resultant birth was a stillborn daughter.  Lizzie’s post-partum depression was followed by an overdose of laudanum the following year.  Rossetti was devastated and, at her funeral in Highgate Cemetery, he buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her body.

Poetry and painting are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, while also creating art to illustrate poems such as "Goblin Market" by his sister.

His personal life was closely woven into his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses.  William Morris’s wife, Jane, regularly sat for him during the next few years, and it was said she "consumed and obsessed him in paint, poetry, and life".

During these years, Rossetti was prevailed upon by friends to exhume his poems from his wife's grave which he eventually did, collating and publishing them in 1870.  Their eroticism and sensuality caused much offence. One, "Nuptial Sleep", described a couple falling asleep after sex. It was part of the sonnet sequence The House of Life, a complex series tracing the physical and spiritual development of an intimate relationship.  Rossetti described the sonnet form as a "moment's monument" and these were his crowning literary achievement.

Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, shadowed by addiction to chloral hydrate and increasing mental instability. He spent his last years as a recluse at Cheyne Walk and died on Easter Sunday, April 9th, 1882.

 

In this compilation -

01 - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - An Introduction
02 - The Sonnet by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
03 - Love Enthroned by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
04 - Bridal Birth by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
05 - Sonnet III - Love's Testament by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
06 - Sonnet IV - Lovesight by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
07 - The Kiss by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
08 - Nupital Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
09 - Sonnet VII - Supreme Surrender by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
10 - Sonnet VIII - Love's Lovers by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
11 - Sonnet XX - Gracious Moonlight by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
12 - Sonnet XXVI - Mid-Rapture by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
13 - Sonnet XXVII. Vain Longing - The One Hope by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
14 - Sonnet XXIX - The Moonstar by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
15 - Sonnet XXXVI - Life-in-Love by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
16 - Sonnet XXXVII - The Love Moon by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
17 - The Willowwood Sonnets. Sonnet I by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
18 - Willowwood - Sonnet II by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
19 - Willowwood - Sonnet III by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
20 - Willowwood - Sonnet IV by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
21 - Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
22 - Sunset Wings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
23 - At the Sunrise, 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
24 - Autumn Song by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
25 - On Refusal of Aid Between Nations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
26 - On The Road To Waterloo, the 17th October (En Vigilante, 2 Hours) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
27 - After the German Subjugation of France, 1871 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
28 - Troy Town by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
29 - Sacrament Hymn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
30 - Vox Ecclesiae, Vox Christi by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
31 - My Sister's Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
32 - Genius in Beauty by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
33 - Shakespeare by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
34 - John Keats by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
35 - The Sea Limits by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
36 - On the Site of a Mulberry Tree Planted by William Shakespeare Felled by the Reverend F. Gaskell by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
37 - Silent Noon by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
38 - Song and Music by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
39 - Eden Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
40 - The Blessed Damozel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti