This vibrant collection of essays claims that a complex network of texts by critics, biographers and diarists established the credibility and influence of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Throughout the twentieth century, Modernist taste failed to acknowledge the achievement of oppositional groupings such as the Pre-Raphaelites. The essays collected here, however, reveal that the British group anticipated later avant-gardes by using the written word to configure for itself a radical artistic identity. Public and critics alike were scandalized by the radicalism of Pre-Raphaelite painting, its unflinching portrayal of historical figures and of contemporary life, and its irreverent attitude to artistic convention. Pre-Raphaelitism's innovations were not confined to style: new forms of artistic identity and behaviour were explored. As the contributors interrogate the texts through which Pre-Raphaelitism was constructed, they demonstrate that the movement's wide influence as a cultural phenomenon derived from the interplay between exhibited works and critical discourse. Applying a range of sophisticated methodologies from the fields of literary studies, art history, and cultural studies, these interdisciplinary essays uncover the neglected role of texts in the success of the Pre-Raphaelite rebellion and argue in favor of a new centrality for this movement in the history of nineteenth-century European culture.

Painting the Bible is the first book to investigate the transformations that religious painting underwent in mid-Victorian England. It charts the emergence of a Protestant realist painting in a period of increasing doubt, scientific discovery and biblical criticism. The book analyzes the position of religious painting in academic discourse and assesses the important role Pre-Raphaelite work played in redefining painting for mid-Victorian audiences. This original study brings together a wide range of material from high art and popular culture. It locates the controversy over the religious works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in debates about academicism, revivalism and caricature. It also investigates William Holman Hunt's radical, orientalist-realist approach to biblical subject matter which offered an important updating of the image of Christ that chimed with the principles of liberal Protestantism. The book will appeal to scholars and students across disciplines such as art history, literature, history and cultural studies. Its original research, rigorous analysis and accessible style will make it essential reading for anyone interested in questions of representation and belief in mid-Victorian England.

This is the first full-length study of the popular Victorian writer Catherine Crowe (1790-1872). Crowe is increasingly being recognised as an important and influential figure in the literary and Spiritualist circles of the nineteenth century. This monograph offers a reassessment of her major works, arguing that her writing is prescient. Best known today for her collection of "real" ghost tales The Night Side of Nature: or of Ghosts and Ghost Seers, Crowe also wrote five popular novels as well as numerous short stories and essays. Innovative and sometimes original in their use of genre, her works cover the Newgate genre, help to initiate detective fiction, include elements of the social problem novels of the 1840s, and point the way to the sensation novels of the 1860s. Politically radical in many ways Crowe was vocal about women’s oppression by men, social inequality, poverty, slavery, and animal rights. This volume aims to restore an author who was "[o]nce as famous as Dickens or Thackeray" (Wilson 1986, v) to her proper place in the scholarly discussion of Victorian literature.

In Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing eminent Rossetti scholar Lorraine Janzen Kooistra demonstrates the cultural centrality of a neglected artifact: the Victorian illustrated gift book. Turning a critical lens on “drawing-room books” as both material objects and historical events, Kooistra reveals how the gift book’s visual/verbal form mediated “high” and popular art as well as book and periodical publication. A composite text produced by many makers, the poetic gift book was designed for domestic space and a female audience; its mode of publication marks a significant moment in the history of authorship, reading, and publishing. With rigorous attention to the gift book’s aesthetic and ideological features, Kooistra analyzes the contributions of poets, artists, engravers, publishers, and readers and shows how its material form moved poetry into popular culture. Drawing on archival and periodical research, she offers new readings of Eliza Cook, Adelaide Procter, and Jean Ingelow and shows the transatlantic reach of their verses. Boldly resituating Tennyson’s works within the gift-book economy he dominated, Kooistra demonstrates how the conditions of corporate authorship shaped the production and receptionof the laureate’s verses at the peak of his popularity. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing changes the map of poetry’s place—in all its senses—in Victorian everyday life and consumer culture.

. The fifty-five letters between May and Quinn and the editor's discovery of May's forgotten play, Lady Griselda's Dream (reprinted here for the first time since 1898) make this volume the key that unlocks hitherto unknown information about William Morris's youngest daughter and "the man from New York."

Pre-Raphaelitism was the first avant-garde movement in Britain. It shocked its first audience, and as it modulated into Aestheticism it continued to disturb the British public. This interdisciplinary study traces the sources of this critical reaction to the representation of the body in painting and poetry from the work of Millais and Morris to that of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. The book also explores how reactions were conditioned by such late nineteenth-century anxieties as fear of cholera and hatred of Catholicism, fascination with the fallen woman, horror at the `shrieking sisterhood' of emancipated women, and even the terror of psycho-sexual diseases.

Beginning with an introduction that examines the portrayal of the characters of Lancelot and Guinevere from their origins to the present day, this collection of 16 essays-five of which appear here for the first time-puts particular emphasis on the appearance of the two characters in medieval and modern literature. Besides several studies exploring feminist concerns, the volume features articles on the representation of the lovers in medieval manuscript illuminations (18 plates focus on scenes of their first kiss and the consummation of the adultery), in film, and in other visual arts. A 200-item bibliography completes the volume.