For critics like John Ruskin and Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1828-1892) was one of the great creative figures of the day, a painter
and a poet of major stature. Yeats and the young Pound regarded him as
an exemplary figure of solitary dedication to art and beauty. In this
selection Clive Wilmer has made a personal choice, emphasizing the 'pure
poetry' of the lyrics at the expense of the more conventionally
Victorian monologues and narratives.