The Iliad

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1840 February

Bibliography

◦ Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial, 212.

◦ WMR, Family Letters, vol. I, 81

◦ Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 1 (no. 3).

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

In February 1840 DGR made twenty-seven illustrations for Homer's Iliad “to please his sister Maria, who. . .was well acquainted with Pope's translation” ( Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1 ). The drawings remain in the family, with a few having been reproduced by Marillier. Of the drawings WMR observes that they “are not in any tolerable degree good, nor even distinctly promising; but they may count for something as showing the lad's ambitious temper in design, and his willingness to take up any attempt that offered, however ludicrously inadequate his means for coping with it” ( WMR, Family Letters, I. 81 ).

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: s3.raw.xml